The armies they are massing:
They line and ring every shore, every strand bristling with
The deadliest of weapons;
The tocsin should be sounded,
And every cannon is round at its bore.
Fires rage unchecked and unopposed throughout the
Entire world, and mankind, in part, prepares hastily and needlessly
Yet more and crueler,
Harsher atrocities, cruelties
And machines and weapons of horrific war.
Bloody folly and empty vainglory to
Embark imprimis upon the roads to all-out war,
I greatly fear that these are man's fate,
And though I attempt to raise the alarm
With this writing of mine, yet I fear I may be too late!
"Too late! Too late! This, then, is mankind's fate!" It cruelly mocks,
Crows and caws as the ebon raven,
Croaking its dread prophecies in my ever-attentive ear.
It chills even my waiting
Tankard of frothy, frosty beer;
Yet no beer-drinker am I,
No quaffer and lover of ales and lagers.
And still I hold a lonely vigil,
And keep a silent, motionless, breathless watch on the swiftly storm-filling sky.
5. Making steel-enclosed aeronautical, aerodynamical vessels sealed
And brimming only with overmuch indiscriminating death:
Dual-edged, oiled with and soaking in an abundant poison bringing
Vicious death to the poisoner as well as the poisoned,
Man is a violent, self-destructive fool: Lame, impotent,
Obsessed and somehow impatient of vilest death.
Death for his opponent, his manufactured,
Fancied nemesis:
Nay; his NEMESES:
Yet not for himself, this horrid death he dreams of bringing to an imagined enemy only.
Additionally, he hath built and placed all his faith in titanic weaponry of
Awesome destructiveness,
Possessed of the devastating potency of an angry, rampaging god.
And these vile implements of utterest extirpation;
Encased within a very nation of steel tubular;
They are as wayward, incorrigible,
Marauding, plundering, malicious gargantuan
Monsters:
Great, cyclopean giants of a horribly puissant
Destroying fury
Bringing only disaster upon all heads;
Anarachic, ultra-liberal in there dark and evil slaughterousness:
Slaying even their maker, having no loyalty, cold and cruel:
Delighting only in death, wanton destruction, infamy and cruelty.
No man nor nation should possess these terrible weapons,
Yet too many do.