War by Percy Bysshe Shelley — Read

Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled / Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world. / See! on yon heath what countless victims lie, / Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky; / Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage / Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage: / Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies, / He shudders in death's latest agonies; / Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek, / Yet does his parting breath essay to speak- / ‘Oh God! my wife, my children-Monarch thou / For whose support this fainting frame lies low; / For whose support in distant lands I bleed, / Let his friends' welfare be the warrior's meed. / He hears me not-ah! no-kings cannot hear, / For passion's voice has dulled their listless ear. / To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan, / Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant's anguished groan. / Oh! now I die-but still is death's fierce pain- / God hears my prayer-we meet, we meet again. ' / He spake, reclined him on death's bloody bed, / And with a parting groan his spirit fled. / Oppressors of mankind to YOU we owe / The baleful streams from whence these miseries flow; / For you how many a mother weeps her son, / Snatched from life's course ere half his race was run! / For you how many a widow drops a tear, / In silent anguish, on her husband's bier! / ‘Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,' she cries, / ‘Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes? / Is this the system which Thy powerful sway, / Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay, / Formed and approved? -it cannot be-but oh! / Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe. ' / 'Tis not-He never bade the war-note swell, / He never triumphed in the work of hell- / Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed, / Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed. / Ah! when will come the sacred fated time, / When man unsullied by his leaders' crime, / Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride, / Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men's side? / Ah! when will come the time, when o'er the plain / No more shall death and desolation reign? / When will the sun smile on the bloodless field, / And the stern warrior's arm the sickle wield? / Not whilst some King, in cold ambition's dreams, / Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes; / Not whilst for private pique the public fall, / And one frail mortal's mandate governs all. / Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway; / Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away. / Careless who lives or dies-so that he gains / Some trivial point for which he took the pains. / What then are Kings? -I see the trembling crowd, / I hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud; / Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile, / But April's sunshine is a Monarch's smile- / Kings are but dust-the last eventful day / Will level all and make them lose their sway; / Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch's hand, / And from the warrior's grasp wrest the ensanguined brand. / Oh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone, / Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown? / And love and concord hast thou swept away, / As if incongruous with thy parted sway? / Alas, I fear thou hast, for none appear. / Now o'er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear, / With War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train; - / List'ning he pauses on the embattled plain, / Then speeding swiftly o'er the ensanguined heath, / Has left the frightful work to Hell and Death. / See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car, / He scents the battle's carnage from afar; / Hell and Destruction mark his mad career, / He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear; / Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell, / That thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell. / ‘It is thy work! ' I hear a voice repeat, / Shakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat; / And at the orphan's sigh, the widow's moan, / Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne- / ‘It is thy work, O Monarch; ' now the sound / Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around, / Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell / That Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell, / Will soon the cause, the hated cause remove, / Which tears from earth peace, innocence, and love.