1650-1659
(Addressed to the Liberal Members who "went back" on their previous vote and rejected the grant for his statue.)
"Tear out the page his hand hath writ in blood."
Aye! tho' a decade filled with mighty deeds
That page records; what though in it the seeds
Of greater freedom sprung, than ever stood
On any shore, to shadow freedom's brood.
The lordly oak from which a fleet proceeds
May fall unhonoured; can mere party needs
Fill your hands too, with this consenting mud?
We Irishmen found only shade to die
Within the shadow of that mighty tree;
But you base Englishmen it bore on high,
And girt your commerce safe on many a sea:
O! may the people Cromwell taught, deny
Your right within these walls, and turn the key!
[The Triumph of Hugh O'Neill]
Beal an Altra Buidhe (The Fight of the Yellow Ford, 1598.)
Speed the joyful news of victory from Dungannon to Gweedore,
Let the shout of triumph echo 'mid the cliffs of dark Benmore,
Let the flame that gleams on Sperrin light a flame on every strand,
Till one mighty blaze shall tell it to all men throughout the land.
The haughty Saxon boasted he would ravage broad Tyrone,
And lay our fields in ashes, and make our flocks his own,
Nor hold his hand 'till humbled each Irish kerne should kneel
To England's monarch only, and not to Hugh O'Neill.
But vain was all his boasting, and vain was all he swore,
For, like the storms of winter when from the hills they pour,
With clouds of long-haired spearmen, and ranks of flashing steel,
O'er the broken host of Saxons swept the children of O'Neill.
Arquebus and gun were fired, yet were fired all in vain,
For their owners' heads were cloven by the lightening sweeping skean,
But the sturdy English yeomen, who had ne'er been known to reel,
Like the withered leaves of autumn, fell before the fierce O'Neill.
Blackwater's tide ran darker than e'er it ran before,
The "Yellow Ford" was crimsoned, the fields were drenched with gore.
The Saxon host had vanished; and Armagh rang out a peal
Of triumph o'er the vanquished, and of welcome to O'Neill.
No more the feet of foemen shall taint our Northern soil,
No more the waving cornfields shall be the Saxon's spoil.
Our flag no longer drooping, each fold shall now reveal,
And wave for God and Erin and our darling Hugh O'Neill.
[Translation from Victor Hugo's "Feuilles d'Automne"]
"I hate oppression with a hate profound,
And wheresoever in the wide world round,
Beneath a traitor king, a cruel sky,
I hear appeal a strangled people's cry—
Where mother Greece, by Christian kings betrayed
To butcher Turks, hangs disembowelled, flayed.
Where Ireland, bleeding on her Cross expires,
And German truth in vain fronts royal liars.
"Oh then, upon their heads my curse I launch,
These kings whose steeds pace bloody to the paunch:
I feel the poet speaks their judgment, and
The indignant Muse, with unrelenting hand,
Shall bind them pilloried to their thrones of shame,
And press their dastard crowns to shape a name
That on their brows the poet's hand shall trace—
So Man may read their calling in their face."
[New Plays and Poems.]
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[Transcriber's Notes:]
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