I. <br /> <br />I am as awful as my brother War, <br />I am the sudden silence after clamour. <br />I am the face that shows the seamy scar <br />When blood and frenzy has lost its glamour. <br />Men in my pause shall know the cost at last <br />That is not to be paid in triumphs or tears, <br />Men will begin to judge the thing that's past <br />As men will judge it in a hundred years. <br /> <br />Nations! whose ravenous engines must be fed <br />Endlessly with the father and the son, <br />My naked light upon your darkness, dread! - <br />By which ye shall behold what ye have done: <br />Whereon, more like a vulture than a dove, <br />Ye set my seal in hatred, not in love. <br /> <br />II. <br /> <br />Let no man call me good. I am not blest. <br />My single virtue is the end of crimes, <br />I only am the period of unrest, <br />The ceasing of horrors of the times; <br />My good is but the negative of ill, <br />Such ill as bends the spirit with despair, <br />Such ill as makes the nations' soul stand still <br />And freeze to stone beneath a Gorgon glare. <br /> <br />Be blunt, and say that peace is but a state <br />Wherein the active soul is free to move, <br />And nations only show as mean or great <br />According to the spirit then they prove. - <br />O which of ye whose battle-cry is Hate <br />Will first in peace dare shout the name of Love?<br /><br />Eleanor Farjeon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/peace-379/
