TIS a green isle set in a silver water,
A fairy isle where the shamrock grows,
Land of Legend, the Dream-Queen’s daughter—
Out of the Fairies’ hands she rose.
They touched her harp with a tender sighing,
A spirit-song from a world afar,
They touched her heart with a fire undying
To fight and follow her battle-star.
Too long, too long thro’ the grey years growing
Feud and faction have swept between
The thistledown and the red rose blowing,
And the three-fold leaf of the shamrock green;
But the seal of blood, ye shall break it never:
With rifles grounded and bare of head
We drink to the dead who live forever—
A silent toast—To the Irish dead!
VISION
DOROTHY PAUL
in The Saturday Evening Post
Permission to reproduce in this book
ABOVE the broken walls the apple boughs
Are murmurous with bees;
Again the slumbrous breeze
Eddies the snow of drifted chestnut flowers,
And little ruffling winds go silverly
Along the poplar trees.
They never speak of it to me,
My comrades. Awkward-kind
I hear their voices roughen and grow dumb,
Remembering I am blind—
But through the dark, I know—I know the spring has come
To France!
What matter I’ll not see beneath the wheat
Red poppies burn again;
The gleam of April rain
Along the boulevards; the flower girls
With mignonette and pinks and clematis;
Not see again the Seine
Slip under the silver bridges to Rouen?
Ah, no; nor see
The pale gold smile of buttercups, that glorifies
Gray ruins with bravery
Heartbreaking, valiant—the smile that lights the eyes
Of France!
For through the sightless mercy of my days
White visions come to me—
Beyond the dark I see.
Not this worn, steadfast France, wan, gallant, spent,
With eyes burned haggard by the spirit of the Maid
And Charlotte of Normandy—
But France triumphant, high of heart,
Smiling through throbbing drums
On Rheims restored, Nancy, Alsace, Lorraine,
In that new spring that comes—
The spring we halt and blind and dead bring back again
To France!