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And fiendish satisfaction, when the dust

Of God’s fair earth with precious blood is sate,

Who laughs at the destruction of a nation.

Whose breath is pois’nous fumes and dire disease,

And darting flames, devouring man’s abodes,

Whose voice with terror fills all living things,

And nought attracts except the vulture’s wings,

Its rending roar the very heaven goads

Until the dark’ning cloud a-weeping flees.

Whose brutish hands, with gore and grime polluted,

Are strangling innocents and ripping wombs,

And gagging Virtue’s cry, and sundering

The maiden from her mother; plundering

The aged and the sick, yea, even the tombs

Of those “at rest” are by this monster looted.

It rules the empires, and it rules the seas,

It is the prince of power in the air,

And kings and nations worship it with fear,

But drunk with blood they loud and wildly cheer,

And think its glory great beyond compare,

Yea, worth all loss and human miseries.

O, Christ, who stood on storm-tossed Galilee,

Reproaching evil, saying: “Peace be still!”