Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

DISARMAMENT.

     "PUT up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
     Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
     O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
     And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
     With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
     Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
     Down which a groaning diapason runs
     From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
     Of desolate women in their far-off homes,
     Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
     O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
     War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

     Fear not the end. There is a story told
     In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
     And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
     With grave responses listening unto it
     Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
     Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
     Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,
     Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.
     "O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate
     Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."
     The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace
     Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,
     In pity said: "Poor fiend, even thee I love."
     Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank
     To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank
     Into the form and fashion of a dove;
     And where the thunder of its rage was heard,
     Circling above him sweetly sang the bird
     "Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song;
     "And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"

     1871.