Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be
Still unconquered, proud, and free;
Strike, and fear not,—victory
Waits on every blow;
Strike, that we may never roam
Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;
Strike together, and strike home,
Vengeance on the foe!
THE FENIAN’S DREAM.
CHRISTMAS, 1867.
THROUGH London’s dull and murky air
The merry Christmas bells
Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,
Their sonorous throbs and swells.
To the half-slumbering town they spoke
Of peace and God’s good-will,
And seemed to chase with pealing stroke
The fiends of hate and ill;
But, ah, how cruelly they broke
Around dark Pentonville!
There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,
Half timid, forced their way,
And fell in slender, silvery streams,
Down where the convict lay.
They glanced a moment round the place,
Cold, comfortless, and bare,
Then, in a pitying embrace,
Like angel spirits there,
Caressed the careworn, pallid face,
So wan, and yet so fair.
They seemed to whisper softly while
Around his head they strayed,
For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,
Half joy, half anguish, played;
As if the tender moonbeams sought
Bright tales of hope to tell,
And the day memories, bitter, wrought
Such fancies to dispel;
And so his two dream guardians fought
Within his lonely cell.
His dream was of the loved old land
He never could forget—
The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,
Had not subdued it yet;
The land of legend and of lay,
Of mountain, stream, and lake,
Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,
Of forest, glen, and brake,
Where highland sprite and lowland fay
A home forever make.
The land whose children toil and bleed,
And drudge and starve in vain,
For where the peasant sows the seed,
A stranger reaps the grain.
The Isle of Saints—where knaves and spies
Flourish and thrive apace;
Where fortune must be wooed by lies,
Dishonor, and disgrace;
The true man from such saintdom flies,
And cattle take his place.
Land of the green, and of the gray!
For workhouse, tomb, and jail
Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,
And answer, Innisfail,
Tell us which tint thou seest most,
The old one or the new?
The green of which our poets boast,
Or the more sombre hue?
Few wear the green: a countless host
Have donned the gray for you.
Island of verdure, glorious land!
So rich in fertile plains,
Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,
Yet famine ever reigns;
Where through the mellow ripening corn
The balmiest zephyrs sigh,
Where brighter seems each glowing morn,
More radiant each sky;
Where ’tis misfortune to be born,
And happiness to die.
Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled
To think he played once more,
A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,
Beside the cabin door—
The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,
Upon his mother’s knee,
He first had learned to lisp a prayer
For Ireland’s liberty,
And ever pregnant seemed the air
With joyous melody.