| |
| “PUT up the sword!” the voice of Christ once more | |
| Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar, | |
| O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped | |
| And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped | |
| With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow | 5 |
| Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe | |
| Down which a groaning diapason runs | |
| From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons | |
| Of desolate women in their far-off homes, | |
| Waiting to hear the step that never comes! | 10 |
| O men and brothers! let that voice be heard. | |
| War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword! | |
| |
| Fear not the end. There is a story told | |
| In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold, | |
| And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit | 15 |
| With grave responses listening unto it: | |
| Once on the errands of his mercy bent, | |
| Buddha, the holy and benevolent, | |
| Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look, | |
| Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook. | 20 |
| “O son of peace!” the giant cried, “thy fate | |
| Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate.” | |
| The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace | |
| Of fear or anger, in the monster’s face, | |
| In pity said, “Poor fiend, even thee I love.” | 25 |
| Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank | |
| To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank | |
| Into the form and fashion of a dove; | |
| And where the thunder of its rage was heard, | |
| Circling above him sweetly sang the bird: | 30 |
| “Hate hath no harm for love,” so ran the song, | |
| “And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!” | |
| |
