PEACE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Sep 27, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 39.

PEACE.

No LONGER 'mid the leaden hail Do Japanese and Russian strain; The clouds of war no longer float Above the tortured Asian plain; The mighty armies that have crouched, Like beasts to fall upon their prey, Shall strike their tents, and quietly Break up the camp, and march away.

The deadened grass, the blood-soaked soil, Shall know no more the heavy tread Of marching armies, and the sun, Like vengeful demon overhead, No more shall parch the lips of those Who, torn with bursting metal, lie Day after day with gaping wound, Too weak to live, too strong to die.

All past—and yet not all, for, lo, The widow and the fatherless Bear wounds that peace can never heal, And grief that words can not express Pervades the Mongol heart, and wells In Muscovite and Cossack breast— The bleeding, aching, kindred tie That binds the East unto the West!

Peace comes, and brutal war departs; The statesmen wrangle o'er the spoil; The soldier wets it with his blood, And others come to claim the soil; The humble peasant meets the foe, His breast receives the sabre thrust, And, tho his country win or lose, His bones are mingled with the dust.

—New York Tribune.