there can be on area of human experience that has generated a wider range of power-ful feelings than war. the 250 poems include in this acclaimed anthology span centuries of human conflict – from davids lament for saul and jonathan and homers iliad ,to the finest poems of the second world war, vietnam , Northern ireland ,and el salvador as well as chilling vision ‘the next war’.reflecting the feelings of authors as diverse as Virgil , daniel de fore , emily dickinson , and Adrian mitchell,they reveal a great shift in social awareness from mans early celebratory war-songs to the more recent anti-war attitudes of poets responding to ‘man’s inhumanity to man;and to woman and children