Indeed, it has been said that the blow was aimed as much at the freedom of the Press and the liberty of thought as the actual rising in arms; but as the majority of the sentiments maintained were but repetitions of the muzzled grievances of labour and thought in England, the effect will undoubtedly react through British democracy upon the heads of those who took advantage of the racial prejudice to crush out of opposition.
Thus John MacDermot, one of the signatories of the rebel proclamation, was editor of a paper called Freedom, and had already served a term of imprisonment for speeches which had been interpreted as prejudicial to recruiting. Edward de Valera, who commanded at Boland's mill, and who was sentenced to penal servitude for life, had been a professor in Blackrock College. W. O'Clery Curtis, who was deported, was a journalist, and Arthur Griffiths the able editor of the Irish Year-book.
Then came the disciples of the muses. Thomas MacDonagh seems to have been always more or less haunted with the vision of revolution, and as early as eight years ago produced a play entitled "When the Dawn is Come," though the insurrection it foretold was placed fifty years hence.
He, too, wrote poetry, like Pearse, under whom he was at school, but he was better known and his verse of a higher standard. He seems almost to have had an inkling of his future fate, and might also be said to have deliberately chosen the lost cause of his heart, for, in one of his earlier poems, entitled "The War Legacy," we find the following:
Far better War's battering breeze than the Peace that barters the Past,
Better the fear of our fathers' God than friendship false with their foe:
And better anointed Death than the Nation's damnation at last,
And the crawling of craven limbs in life and the curse of the coward below.
Among his publications are "Songs of Myself" (Hodges, Figgis & Co.), "Thomas Campion" (Hodges, Figgis & Co.), and a larger volume of "Lyrical Poems," reprinted by the Irish Review.
At the time of his death he was Lecturer in English Literature at the National University.