Et de ses propres mains déchire ses entrailles;
Que le courroux du Ciel, allumé par mes vœux,
Fasse pleuvoir sur elle un déluge de feux!
Puissai-je de mes yeux y voir tomber ce foudre,
Voir ses maisons en cendre, et tes lauriers en poudre;
Voir le dernier Romain à son dernier soupir,
Moi seule en être cause, et mourir de plaisir!”
Note to [Page 81].
“And go to Athunree!” I cried.
In the reign of Edward the Second, the Irish presented to Pope John the Twenty-second a memorial of their sufferings under the English, of which the language exhibits all the strength of despair:—“Ever since the English,” say they, “first appeared upon our coasts, they entered our territories under a certain specious pretence of charity, and external hypocritical show of religion, endeavouring at the same time, by every artifice malice could suggest, to extirpate us root and branch, and without any other right than that of the strongest; they have so far succeeded by base fraudulence, and cunning, that they have forced us to quit our fair and ample habitations and inheritances, and to take refuge like wild beasts in the mountains, the woods, and the morasses of the country;—nor even can the caverns and dens protect us against their insatiable avarice. They pursue us even into these frightful abodes; endeavouring to dispossess us of the wild uncultivated rocks, and arrogate to themselves the property of every place on which we can stamp the figure of our feet.”