O’er all the world the infectious blast of death (Shelley)

Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War’s red altar lie . . .
When legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory’s views the titled idiot guide.
It is the “cold advisers of yet colder kings” who have “the power to breathe / O’er all the world the infectious blast of death.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Poetical Essay, recently rediscovered after nearly 200 years