Explore "The Crimes of Peace" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Musing upon the tragedies of earth, / Of each new horror which each hour gives birth, / Of sins that scar and cruelties that blight / Life's little season, meant for man's delight, / Methought those monstrous and repellent crimes / Which hate engenders in war-heated times, / To God's great heart bring not so much despair / As other sins which flourish everywhere / And in all times-bold sins, bare-faced and proud, / Unchecked by college, and by Church allowed, / Lifting their lusty heads like ugly weeds / Above wise precepts and religious creeds, / And growing rank in prosperous days of peace.
Think you the evils of this world would cease / With war's cessation? / If God's eyes know tears, / Methinks He weeps more for the wasted years / And the lost meaning of this earthly life- / This big, brief life-than over bloody strife. / Yea; there are mean, lean sins God must abhor / More than the fatted, blood-drunk monster, War.