The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,
With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,
But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number
That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.
And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,
To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,
The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow
The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.
CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).
CHRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity,
Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,
Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,
We should be happy—for Christmas is here.
Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,
We have no heart for festivities gay—
Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,
Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.
Oh, dear! what will become of us?
Will they blow up every man or but some of us?
Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!
Give us a rest—we are pining away.
Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior
To the dread terrors that nightly control
All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,
Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!
Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,
Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,
For we may not place a moment’s dependency
How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!
O Lord! but the immensity
Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity
Splits through the dullest official head’s density,
Turning our locks into premature gray.
Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,
Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,
Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,
Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.
How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,
When it may shortly be scattered around,
With scarce a prospect—oh future precarious!
That a brass button would ever be found?
Oh, dear! is there a river in
England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in
Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in
Each beating heart that is left above ground?
IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).
OH, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears
Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,
Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?
The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?
In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom
Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;
See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown—
God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!
Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons
Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,
And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear
Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;
Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow
That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?
Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,
God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!
Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest
From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;
May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped
Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;
For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,
Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,
Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;
So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!