From curses, who knows scarce words enough
To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute,
Technical in victories, and deceit,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which
We join no feeling, and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this god-like frame