To a Minie Ball, by T. Berry Smith

To a Minie Ball-- A Peace Poem

I. Thou Cold Gray Cone

Where once embattled hosts stood face to face

And drove their deadly missiles to and fro,

Among the aftermath a gleaner found thee,

Thou cold gray cone, and brought thee to my desk;

Thy presence there hath often set me musing.

II. War's Enginery

"Thou shalt not kill" is the heaven-descended law,

Which all the world approves-- and yet-- and yet--

O, Mars, grim god of war, from Eden's gate,

Thou'st been man's overlord in all the earth,

E'en history's chiefs thy foremost underlings

At thy behest uncounted of mankind

Have lived and toiled among thy dread devices

Or else in battle gone to instant death.

Great Overlord, thou hast not in thy power

To bid again those multitudes arise

Who in the strength of manhood died for thee;

But, as a workman doth his varied tools,

Thou can'st bring back from all thy battlefields

Thine enginery of death. The spear, the sling,

The catapult, the crossbow and the carbine,

Sabre and sword, and bomb and bayonet,

Galleys of old, high-pooped and brazen-prowed,

That side by side made conflict hand to hand,

And modern men-of-war, sharded with steel

Whose giant tubes from out their fumes and flames

Can hurl huge bolts death-dealing miles away--

All thse and more from out thy fields ingather

And tell me, if thou can'st, great overlord,

What other use use enginery hath had

Save that of killing men. Thro' countless eyars

Equipped with such as these, have living hosts

Stood face to face-- to kill-- to kill-- to kill.

III. Death's Carnival

And now, my musing, like the changeful moon,

Takes on another phase. Me seems we're watching,

A mighty throng of every tribe and time,

To see a drama ancient as the race.

The curtain rises on a vast arena

Whose floor is earth, its vaulted dome the heavens,

And all its scenery Nature manifold.

The Act is War-- the Scene, Death's carnival;

Charge follows charge, horses and men alike

Hurried unwilling headlong into danger,

The frailty of flesh against enduring steel.

The brooks run red with blood, and all the ground

Is thickly strewn with fallen men and beasts,

Some lying still in death, some sorely wounded,

And writhing in their pain-- all, all, alas!

Struck down, laid low in the full pulse of life.

Then comes the end-- the vanquished flee away--

And over the gruesome field the curtain falls.

The throng that watched, waking as from a dream,

Thrilled thro' and thro', gives forth, as with one voice,

The world-old anguished cry, "My God, how awful!"

Come, history, keeper of man's long chronicles,

Unroll thy scroll and let us read the story:

Behold! 'tis writ in blood. Ten thousand times.

This dream's been a dread reality,

And whether the scene was laid on land or sea,

'Twas Tragedy whose aptest name is Hell.

IV. A Prayer for Peace

Once more, thou cold gray cone, I turn to thee

And from my soul send up to Heaven this prayer:

God, speed the day when all thy kind and kindred

Shall vanish from the workshops of the world,

And such as do remain, be but as thou,

The tarnished relics of man's savage years.