Sarah Curran and Anne Devlin
“The rose left her cheek, the brave eyes grew dim,
She drained the bitter cup of sorrow to the brim—
When that sad September noon saw your young heart low,
And the dawn of Ireland shrouded in a bleak cloud of woe.
“I had died for you gladly, my courage never quailed,
When their swords pierced my bosom, their wild threats assailed;
Nor did their prison torture win from me a single tear—
That memory of grief and pain would die if you were here.”
—Ethna Carbery: Anne Devlin’s Lament for Emmet.
SHALL we not join together the two women, whom love for Robert Emmet has dowered with a common immortality, and whom a common agony of loss has bound, one to the other, in the eternal sisterhood of sorrow? So best shall our love and pity reach them both—the fragile girl who died of a broken heart for his sake, and the strong girl whose brave heart faced—for his sake likewise—tortures that were worse than death. And let it not weaken our sympathy with Sarah Curran to remember that the sentimental generation which wept for her (in the rose-tinted shades of its Whig drawing-rooms, the while Tommy Moore set her sorrows to the sweetest and saddest of music) allowed Anne Devlin to die of starvation.