Harriet Prescott Spofford

“ Peace hovering, brooding, over the land, was a vision too dazzling to be clearly seen—the well-tilled fields of heavy-headed grain, with the shadows of clouds sweeping over them; the harbors of the river ports—since the coveted sea was impossible—crowded with masts whose tops sparkled in sun or frost, and perhaps by special pact even the freedom off that great water ”

“ Far to the east the wide plains and forests rolled to the low hills, bathed in the first burst of spring's living sunlit green, fading to deeps of violet distance. "The day-star that rises there to-morrow has risen first in our hearts," he said. "Our little child shall not be born into a world of war." ”

“ Will you, for the sake of pleasing a sentimentalist who gives you no heir to your crown, to your name, who puts an end to your race and dynasty, will you sit still and become a thing aside, degenerate into a tenth-rate principality, while other Powers seize these provinces and hem you in, laugh at the fable of your old prestige, and make nothing of you? ”

“ That is all any man-child may look forward to! What every mother finds she has brought her son into the world for!' Then I said, 'Perhaps one day there will be no more wars.' And she passed on with her boy, crying, 'Will the sun rise in the west?' She was a dark and handsome girl, and when she looked at the boy her bitter laugh melted, in spite of her, into a smile of pride and joy."
"No more wars," said the King, half sadly. "No more dreams of empire." ”

“ She saw the bounds of the kingdom retreat into far horizons; dreams of conquest curtained her sleep.
He remembered a day when she stood with him, a child, on the top of a tower on the border, her scarf blowing in the wind, and she pointed toward the great plains with their wandering tribes and grazing herds. "All that," she said, "is to be yours. When you have strength of body and soul to take it. Doubtless in the long-gone days it belonged to your house. Boundless, beautiful, inexhaustible! ”

“ Yes, circumstances change purposes. Eirene would regret— And yet— Of what weight a woman's wish? After all, what could she know of statecraft?
Ruvizan had said that all women were sentimentalists. Was it sentimentality that had led her, when he found her in her chapel at prayer last night, her long hair fallen about her, the folds of her white cloak making her seem like a kneeling marble there? She was praying for peace, clasping to her heart the image of the Prince of Peace. Was Christ a sentimentalist? ”

“ It is war, I assure you, war that is great and good, that is glorious! It makes towns hum like hives, it gives men all the strong traits, daring, will, determination! It makes great races. It made my own people. ”

“ One day it is to be whitened with the tents of your armies. It is to give you the freedom of the great sea! You will not content yourself with a few paltry river ports!" Yet long before he came to the throne it had seemed to him that he would have enough to do with the provinces that already called him ruler. ”

“ The Councillors, men grown gray in the service of the state—was it by possibility an error to assume his own view to be more correct than theirs? It might be they should lead instead of follow—their wisdom more to the present point than his divine right. ”

“ It meant the stimulation of evil agencies in the commonwealth, the depletion of those of value; the absence of workers on the land, the cessation of crops except where grass grew rank on bloody battle-fields. ”