Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous

by Abram Joseph Ryan

And ah! we pray
With a grief so drear,
That the years may stay
When their graves are near;
Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright,
With love and with beauty, with life and with light,
The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier,
To the hearts that survive them, are evermore dear.

For the hearts so true
To each Old Year cleaves;
Tho' the hand of the New
Flowery garlands weaves.
But the flowers of the future, tho' fragrant and fair,
With the past's withered leaflets may never compare;
For dear is each dead leaf — and dearer each thorn —
In the wreaths which the brows of our past years have worn.

Yea! men will cling
With a love to the last,
And wildly fling
Their arms round their past!
As the vine that clings to the oak that falls;
As the ivy twines round the crumbled walls;
For the dust of the past some hearts higher prize
Than the stars that flash out from the future's bright skies.

And why not so?
The old, Old Years,
They knew and they know
All our hopes and fears;
We walked by their side, and we told them each grief,
And they kissed off our tears while they whispered relief;
And the stories of hearts that may not be revealed
In the hearts of the dead years are buried and sealed.

Let the New Year sing
At the Old Year's grave:
Will the New Year bring
What the Old Year gave?
Ah! the Stranger-Year trips over the snows,
And his brow is wreathed with many a rose:
But how many thorns do the roses conceal
Which the roses, when withered, shall so soon reveal?

Let the New Year smile
When the Old Year dies;
In how short a while
Shall the smiles be sighs?
Yea! Stranger-Year, thou hast many a charm,
And thy face is fair and thy greeting warm,
But, dearer than thou — in his shroud of snows —
Is the furrowed face of the Year that goes.

Yea! bright New Year,
O'er all the earth,
With song and cheer,
They will hail thy birth;
They will trust thy words in a single hour,
They will love thy face, they will laud thy power;
For the ~New~ has charms which the ~Old~ has not,
And the Stranger's face makes the Friend's forgot.

Erin's Flag

Unroll Erin's flag! fling its folds to the breeze!
Let it float o'er the land, let it flash o'er the seas!
Lift it out of the dust — let it wave as of yore,
When its chiefs with their clans stood around it and swore
That never! no, never! while God gave them life,
And they had an arm and a sword for the strife,
That never! no, never! that banner should yield
As long as the heart of a Celt was its shield:
While the hand of a Celt had a weapon to wield
And his last drop of blood was unshed on the field.

Lift it up! wave it high! 'tis as bright as of old!
Not a stain on its green, not a blot on its gold,
Tho' the woes and the wrongs of three hundred long years
Have drenched Erin's sunburst with blood and with tears!
Though the clouds of oppression enshroud it in gloom,
And around it the thunders of Tyranny boom.
Look aloft! look aloft! lo! the clouds drifting by,
There's a gleam through the gloom, there's a light in the sky,
'Tis the sunburst resplendent — far, flashing on high!
Erin's dark night is waning, her day-dawn is nigh!