WHO SHOULD WEAR THE LAUREL WREATH?

A beautiful yet excedeeingly gory (or vice versa) anti-war poem, by wonderful Victorian London poetess and feminist (one of my favourites) Eliza Cook:

" Whom do we crown with the laurel leaf? 
The hero-god, the soldier chief; 
But we dream of the crushing cannon-wheel, 
Of the flying shot and the reeking steel. 
Of the crimson plain where warm blood smokes. 
Where clangour deafens and sulphur chokes ; 
Oh, who can love the laurel wreath, 
Pluck'd from the gory field of death ? 

Whom do we crown with summer flowers ? 
The young and fair in their happiest hours. 
But the buds will only live in the light 
Of festive day or a glittering night ; 
We know the vermil tints will fade 
That pleasure dies with the bloomy braid : 
And who can prize the coronal 
That's formed to dazzle, wither, and fall ?"

Sheer baroque vanitas. 

Sheer critique, in the right words, of warfare and superficiality.