Men·Art·War

Through clouded eyes we glimpse the cliffs that loom over yon distant shores.The waves they break with giant's strength and boom like oaken castle doors.Lightning threatens from above while frenzied sharks await below.Danger it is all about. In every element lurks a foe.Creation. Destruction. Birth and Death. The same. The same. The same.Fire melts the eternal ice, which transformed, douses the flame.Onward we sail, toward those cliffs, determined to reach the beckoning shore.And on landing make what our fathers made-glorious art and glorious war.Thus read the final lines of The Lay of Hadding, the anonymously penned late 19th century poem that later stirred a generation of young writers (including W.B. Yeats and Wyndham Lewis), and the inspiration for the stories presented in Men·Art·War. From the Egyptian deserts to the green fields of Gaul to the small towns of North Carolina; from 332 B.C.E. to eleven years after tomorrow; here are ten rousing tales of art and war, and the men who wage both.