George Essex Evans

“ Thousands lie stretched in the red swathes of War,
In rigid wreck, like fields of storm-crushed corn–
Grey faces twisted to a horrid smile,
And limbs and piteous bodies wrenched and
torn,
Mangled unspeakably, strewn pile on pile.
I turned to Peace amid her olive trees:
Great cities rose before me, villages,
The spacious mansion and the lonely cot–
There was no door that Pain had entered not.
I heard like sobbings of an unseen tide
Its keen fire run through all things, and I
said:
"Peace masks a secret war on every side.
There is no rest from travail: God is dead." ”