Many thousand years have fled in darkness,
Since the sword first cut his scaly armor,
And the red wound roused him into madness;
But the good knight is of race immortal,
Ever young, and passionate and fearless;
And the strength which oozes from the dragon,
Blooms reviving in the glorious warrior.'

And, after all, the demon of war is not so black as we have painted him.
We do not shudder to-day as we read of the siege of Troy or the downfall
of Carthage, or the Romance of the Cid. The song of Deborah, 'of the
avenging of Israel _when the people willingly offered themselves_,' is
one glorious burst of praise to God and gratitude to the martyrs. There
was war in heaven when ambition was cast out:--what quiet pastoral
appeals to our noblest impulses as Paradise Lost does? Wisely and well
speaks the English clergyman when he says:--

'But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth,
while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished--as,
in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will
distinguish--war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher
feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible.
The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and
insults to women worse than death--and human features obliterated
beneath the hoof of the war-horse--and reeking hospitals, and ruined
commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts--they are all awful. But
there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the _decay
of enthusiasm and manliness is worse_. And it is worse than death, aye,
worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated
down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in