From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,
Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;
We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,
And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.
Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us
We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,
While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus
That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!
But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,
Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;
When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,
’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!
Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,
The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,
Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying
The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!
Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow
With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;
Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow—
That morning must dawn on our island at last.
Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;
Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them
To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them
To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!
THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.
WHEN Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the combined detective forces.
Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,—intensely jealous—the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy—a Mount Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun, cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.
She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions, in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his coat-collar as a sort of chevaux-de-frise to repel illegal embraces. Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to witness the pair—he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging promiscuously about her—careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase to that winning post, the door.
Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.
Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell, but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any postal manual.
Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type. London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to Love’s young dream in the entire A division.