"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more <br />Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar, <br />O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped <br />And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped <br />With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow <br />Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe <br />Down which a groaning diapason runs <br />From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons <br />Of desolate women in their far-off homes <br />Waiting to hear the step that never comes! <br />O men and brothers! let that voice be heard. <br />War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword! <br /> <br />Fear not the end. There is a story told <br />In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold, <br />And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit <br />With grave responses listening unto it: <br />Once, on the errands of his mercy bent, <br />Buddha, the holy and benevolent, <br />Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look, <br />Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook, <br />"O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate <br />Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate." <br />The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace <br />Of fear and anger, in the monster's face, <br />In pity said, "Poor fiend, even thee I love." <br />Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank <br />To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank <br />Into the form and fashion of a dove <br />And where the thunder of its rage was heard, <br />Circling above him sweetly sang the bird: <br />"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song, <br />"And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/disarmament/
