Away with themes of war! away with war itself! Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of blacken’d, mutilated corpses! That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-tongued wolves, not reasoning men, And in its stead speed industry’s campaigns, With thy undaunted armies, engineering, Thy pennants labor, loosen’d to the breeze, Thy bugles sounding loud and clear.
Away with old romance! Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts, Away with love-verses sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers, Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide, The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few, With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.