O my young brother, I cry for you <br />Don't you understand you must not die! <br />You who were born the last of all <br />Command a special store of parents' love <br />Would parents place a blade in children's hands <br />Teaching them to murder other men <br />Teaching them to kill and then to die? <br />Have you so learned and grown to twenty-four? <br /> <br />O my brother, you must not die! <br />Could it be the Emperor His Grace <br />Exposeth not to jeopardy of war <br />But urgeth men to spilling human blood <br />And dying in the way of wild beasts, <br />Calling such death the path to glory? <br />If His Grace possesseth noble heart <br />What must be the thoughts that linger there?<br /><br />Akiko Yosano<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/o-my-brother-you-must-not-die/
