"Still I can govern," said Captain Sword;
"Fate I respect; and I stick to my word."
And in truth so he did; but the word was one
He had sworn to all vanities under the sun,
To do, for their conq'rors, the least could be done.
Besides, what had he with his worn-out story,
To do with the cause he had wrong'd, and the glory?
No: Captain Sword a sword was still,
He could not unteach his lordly will;
He could not attemper his single thought;
It might not be bent, nor newly wrought:
And so, like the tool of a disus'd art,
He stood at his wall, and rusted apart.
'Twas only for many-soul'd Captain Pen
To make a world of swordless men.
POSTSCRIPT;
CONTAINING SOME REMARKS ON WAR AND MILITARY STATESMEN.
POSTSCRIPT;
CONTAINING SOME REMARKS
ON WAR AND MILITARY STATESMEN.
The object of this poem is to show the horrors of war, the false ideas of power produced in the minds of its leaders, and, by inference, the unfitness of those leaders for the government of the world.