Explain this poem. 10 points PLEASE for good help?

Question

Please explain the poem situation, i know its about war.

Sonnet

On Seeing A Piece of Our Heavy Artillery

Brought into Action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,

Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;

Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse

Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!

Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,

And beat it down before its sins grow worse.

Spend our resentment, cannon,-yea, disburse

Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison

Must wither innocent of enmity,

Be not withdrawn, dark arm, the spoilure done,

Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.

But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,

May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

Answer 1

Tyr to keep both within the visual box and the ethereal meaning.

'The long black arm' is undoubtably the cannon, but it also has a conotation denoting 'the law', or the law of men. Military migth is an effective way to enforce the law, or to prove a point. Whomever has the strongest army get to call the shots.

'About to curse' is the cannon ball or shell produced, with black powder, the curse is a figurative word meaning the pain inflicted upon the hapless victims. Years rehearse is the time soldiers are trained to use the cannon, as well as the engineers whom spent years desigining and building them.

Like most poets, this bard could see only the horror of war and thusly ignored the fact that without war, peace cannot be attained. The use of 'arrogance' as the sole purpose for the cannon's report showcases this bias ont he poet's part well, as also his use of 'spend our resentment'.... when you 'spend' something, you use it as currency, thus he says the currency of war is but resentment.

Our gold in shapes of flame: can mean the gold is melted down, or  used as money with which to buy fire (gunpowder) to rain down on the enemy.

Our breaths in storm: the air once used for speech is now more foreceful, used to order troops forward in a 'storm', to incite patriotic pushed into enemy lines.

While the painting of war is dark and forboding, it comes at a necessary cost for peace ot reign. The poet gets one part right: 'Yet, for men's sakes'.... indeed it is for our own survival that we war, protect ourselves, lest the enemy thrive and cut us down on another day.

Even the poet cannot escape the fact that while it is bloody and dreadful and high in human cost, war in inevitable; he sees this, though he does not like it.

Who does? No sane person likes war.

"War is h**l..." Gen. Sherman