STEPHEN CRANE

[1871–1900]

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was the fourteenth and youngest child of a Methodist minister. He started to write stories at the age of eight and at sixteen was writing feature articles for the New York Tribune. After attending Lafayette College and Syracuse University, he returned to New York where he lived in poverty as a freelance writer and journalist. His experience in the Bowery slums supplied detail for his first, self-published novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), a pioneer work of the naturalistic movement. His most famous novel, The Red Badge of Courage, a realistic depiction of the Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier published in 1895, was a resounding success. His achievements as a novelist won him assignments as a special newspaper correspondent and enabled him to travel widely, reporting on the Spanish-American and Graeco-Turkish wars. In addition to several volumes of essays and short stories, Crane published two collections of poems, The Black Riders (1895) and War Is Kind (1899). He settled briefly in England and died from tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany, a few months before his twenty-ninth birthday.

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.

Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky

And the affrighted steed ran on alone,

Do not weep.

War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,

Little souls who thirst for fight,

These men were born to drill and die.

The unexplained glory flies above them,

Great is the Battle-God, great, and his Kingdom—

A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.

Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,

Raged at his breast, gulped and died,

Do not weep.

War is kind.

Swift blazing flag of the regiment,

Eagle with crest of red and gold,

These men were born to drill and die.

Point for them the virtue of slaughter,

Make plain to them the excellence of killing

And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button

On the bright splendid shroud of your son,

Do not weep.

War is kind.