Explore "Russia to the Pacifists" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, / But -- leave your sports a little while -- the dead are borne this way! / Armies dead and Cities dead, past all count or care. / God rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there? / Singing. -- Break ground for a wearied host / That have no ground to keep. / Give them the rest that they covet most, / And who shall next to sleep, good sirs, / In such a trench to sleep?
God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass. / We go to dig a nation's grave as great as England was. / For this Kingdom and this Glory and this Power and this Pride / Three hundred years it flourished -- in three hundred days it died. / Singing -- Pour oil for a frozen throng, / That lie about the ways. / Give them the warmth they have lacked so long / And what shall be next to blaze, good sirs, / On such a pyre to blaze?