The Hymn of Hate
p. 49 · Read in the full issue
AND this I hate—not men, nor flag nor race, But only War, with its wild, grinning face.
God strike it till its eyes be blind as night, And all its members tremble with affright!
Oh, let it hear in its death agony The wail of mothers for their best-loved ones, And on its head Descend the venomed curses of its sons Who followed her, deluded, where its guns Had dyed the daisies red.
All these I hate—war and its panoply, The lie that hides its ghastly mockery, That makes its glories out of women’s tears.
The toil of peasants through the burdened years, The legacy of long disease that preys On bone and body in the after-days.
God’s curses pour, Until it shrivel with its votaries And die away in its own fiery seas, That nevermore Its dreadful call of murder may be heard; A thing accursed in very deed and word From blood-drenched shore to shore!
Joseph Dana Miller.