The indented second and fourth stanzas function as the poem’s chorus, and provide more generalized images of war and cutting statements about the military. Crane’s detailed snapshots of the fallen men in the first, third, and fifth stanzas evoke the savagery of war and its inherent cruelty. “War is Kind” itself is a 26-line poem in five stanzas focusing on the emotional loss of three women whose lover, father, and son, respectively, have died in war. Many of the short parable-like, densely imagistic lyrics in the collection deal with God’s absence, the indifference of nature, the ironies of war, and the vagaries of love. Having already established his literary reputation at 23 as the author of The Red Badge of Courage and many newspaper stories on wars around the globe, Crane was able to secure an advance for the collection. When Crane published War is Kind and Other Lines he and his wife, Cora, were deeply in debt. Navy, he saw his share of war and death as a journalist, covering conflicts in Greece, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Spain.
Though Crane had been turned down because of poor health when he volunteered to enlist in the U.S. In this way it echoes the stories and scenes from Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. The poem is sometimes referred to by its first line, “Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.” The subject of the poem is war and its effects. “War is Kind” is the first poem of Stephen Crane’s second collection of poems, War is Kind and Other Lines, published in 1899, less than a year before he died.