A Plea



Why need we newer arms invent,
     Poor peoples to destroy?
With what we have let's be content
     And perfect their employ.
With weapons that may millions kill,
     Why should we seek for more,
A brighter spate of blood to spill,
     A deeper sea of gore?
     
The lurid blaze of atom light
     Vast continents will blind,
And steep in centuries of night
     Despairing humankind.
So let's be glad for gun and blade,
     To fight with honest stuff:
Are tank, block-buster, hand-grenade
     And napalm not enough?

Oh to go back a thousand years
     When arrows winged their way,
When foemen fell upon the spears
     And swords were swung to slay!
Behold! Belching in Heaven black
     Mushrooms obscene!
Dear God, the brave days give us back,
               When wars were clean!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 10, 2023

39 sec read
113

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKLKL
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 774
Words 129
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

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