Let the tables be loaded with feasts till they groan!
Till they groan like thy people, through ages of woe!
Let the wine flow around the old Bacchanal's throne,
Like their blood which has flowed, and which yet has to flow.
But let not his name be thine idol alone—
On his right hand behold a Sejanus appears!
Thine own Castlereagh! let him still be thine own!
A wretch never named but with curses and jeers!
Till now, when the isle which should blush for his birth,
Deep, deep as the gore which he shed on her soil,
Seems proud of the reptile which crawled from her earth,
And for murder repays him with shouts and a smile!
Without one single ray of her genius, without
The fancy, the manhood, the fire of her race—
The miscreant who well might plunge Erin in doubt
If she ever gave birth to a being so base.
If she did—let her long-boasted proverb be hushed,
Which proclaims that from Erin no reptile can spring:
See the cold-blooded serpent, with venom full flushed,
Still warming its folds in the breast of a King!
Shout, drink, feast, and flatter! O Erin, how low
Wert thou sunk by misfortune and tyranny, till
Thy welcome of tyrants hath plunged thee below
The depth of thy deep in a deeper gulf still!
My voice, though but humble, was raised for thy right:
My vote, as a freeman's, still voted thee free;
This hand, though but feeble, would arm in thy fight,
And this heart, though outworn, had a throb still for thee!
Yes, I loved thee and thine, though thou art not my land;
I have known noble hearts and great souls in thy sons,
And I wept with the world o'er the patriot band
Who are gone, but I weep them no longer as once.
For happy are they now reposing afar,—
Thy Grattan, thy Curran, thy Sheridan, all
Who for years were the chiefs in the eloquent war,
And redeemed, if they have not retarded, thy fall.
Yes, happy are they in their cold English graves!
Their shades cannot start to thy shouts of to-day,—
Nor the steps of enslavers and chain-kissing slaves
Be stamped in the turf o'er their fetterless clay.