By him be felled their rich fruit-bearing orchards,
Each open highway clothed with ragged weeds;
Long ere the harvest-hour their crops be scattered
By his and Connaught's sons' death-dealing deeds.
Leave hungry famine in Boyne's fertile borders,
Bir of the spreading-boughs bend 'neath his smart,
So that a mother on Meath's richest pastures
Shall munch the morsel of her first child's heart.
Right up to Taillte's very walls and towers
Their villages be levelled with the earth;
Their mills and kilns and haggarts swept before them;
Where wealth and plenty reigns, dread want and dearth.
Smooth into desert wastes fair Usna's mountains,
Pile into hills each widespread pleasant plain;
So that a wandering man may seek her cities,
So he may search her high cross-roads in vain.
By such and such an one let this be treasured
(A tale of wonder for the passing guest)
That on the plain was heard a heifer lowing,
A tinkling cow-bell from the headland's crest.
Shrink not, O desperate band, from weapon-wounding,
Stand as one body, man by brother man;
Had but the clans of Erinn cleaved together
Your land and you had not been under ban.
Arouse thee, valiant Brian of the Bulwarks!
And God be with the champions of the Gael!
The children of the seed of Conn and Eoghan
Stand round thee;—canst thou fail?
FOOTNOTES:
[107] O'Rourke, Prince of Brefney, was a man whom Elizabeth and her representatives in Ireland found it hard to tackle. His handsome presence, his dignity and pride, gave rise to stories of his ascendency over Elizabeth herself. When lying prisoner in the Tower of London, he is said to have sent to ask Elizabeth the favour of being hung, if hang he must, with a gad or withe, after his country's fashion, a request which Cox, who relates the story, says was doubtless willingly granted him. He was executed in 1597. (Cox's Hibernia Anglicana, ed. 1689, p. 399; cf. Bacon's reference to the story in his essay "Of Custom and Education.")