War Poem

My response to siderea.

The idea is to post an anti-war poem or song in your own LJ after reading this. Rudyard Kipling wrote this poem after his son's death in World War I

Gethsemane

THE Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass,

We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.

The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass—
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane.



Before the Battle of the Somme, Kipling was in full support of the war. His son didn't die in the Somme, by the way, but 800,000 other young men did. In his Epitaphs of War, Kipling also wrote:

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.