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02c. 1803 AD
Secure from actual warfare, we have loved To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war! Alas! for ages ignorant of all Its ghastlier workings, famine, or blue plague, Battle or siege, or flight through wintry snows! We, this whole people, have been clamorous For war and bloodshed; animating sports, The which we pay for as a thing to talk of; Spectators and not combatants! No guess Anticipative of a wrong unfelt, No speculation or contingency, However dim and vague, too vague and dim To yield a justifying cause; and forth, Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names And adjurations of the God in heaven, We send our mandates for the certain death Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls, And women that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning’s meal! The poor wretch who has learnt his only prayer From curses, who knows scarcely words enough To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father, Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute And technical in victories and defeats, And all our dainty terms for fratricide; Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which We join no feeling, and attach no form! As if the soldier died without a wound; As if the fibres of this godlike frame Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds, Passed off to heaven, translated, and not killed; As though he had no wife to pine for him, No God to judge him.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge / quote
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