"Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
England, art thou of them, too,
That drink of the poisonous flood,
That hide under poisonous trees?
"Nay, thy name from of old,
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed;
Purer we held thee than this,
Purer fain would we hold;
So goodly a glory it seemed,
A fame so bounteous of bliss,
So more precious than gold.
"Strangers came gladly to thee,
Exiles, chosen of men,
Safe for thy sake in thy shade,
Sat down at thy feet and were free.
So men spake of thee then;
Now shall their speaking be stayed?
Ah, so let it not be!
"Not for revenge or affright,
Pride or a tyrannous lust,
Cast from thee the crown of thy praise.
Mercy was thine in thy might,
Strong when thou wert, thou wert just;
Now, in the wrong-doing days,
Cleave thou, thou at least, to the right.
"Freeman he is not, but slave,
Whoso in fear for the State
Cries for surety of blood,
Help of gibbet and grave;
Neither is any land great
Whom, in her fear-stricken mood,
These things only can save.
"Lo, how fair from afar,
Taintless of tyranny, stands
Thy mighty daughter, for years
Who trod the winepress of war;
Shines with immaculate hands;
Slays not a foe, neither fears;
Stains not peace with a scar!
"Be not as tyrant or slave,
England; be not as these,
Thou that wert other than they.
Stretch out thine hand, but to save;
Put forth thy strength, and release;
Lest there arise, if thou slay,
Thy shame as a ghost from the grave."
The government refused to listen to the appeals, and Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were hanged at Manchester on November 23, 1867, meeting death with courage and composure, we are told. Shore escaped, since he was proven to be an American citizen, and the English spared him lest the protection of the American government might have been invoked in his behalf.
One more incident may be added to the chapter of Fenian rescues. This was the attempt to blow up the House of Detention at Clerkenwell in December, 1867, where two Fenian prisoners were confined. This affair was farcical in conception, but its results were cruelly tragic.
"At the very time that this horrible crime and blunder was perpetrated," writes a historian, "one of the London theatres was nightly crowded by spectators eager to see an Irish melodrama, among the incidents of which was the discussion of a plan for the rescue of a prisoner from a castle cell. The audience was immensely amused by the proposal of one confederate to blow up the castle altogether, and the manner in which it occurred to the simple plotters, just in time, that if they carried out this plan, they must send the prisoner himself flying into the air. The Clerkenwell conspirators had either not seen the popular drama or had missed the point of its broadest joke."
A barrel of gunpowder was exploded close to the wall. Sixty yards of the prison wall were blown in, and many small dwellings in the vicinity were shattered. A dozen persons were killed, one hundred and twenty were wounded, and there were other serious consequences. Had the prisoners been near the wall, they would have been killed. Five men and a woman were put on trial for the crime, but only one man was convicted. He was found guilty on the evidence of an informer and executed. It was agreed that the persons who were concerned in this plot were "of that irresponsible crew who hang on to the skirts of all secret political associations, and whose adhesion is only one other reason for regarding such associations as deplorable and baneful. Such men are of the class who bring a curse, who bring many curses, on even the best cause that strives to work in secret. They prowl after the heels of organized conspiracy, and what it will not do they are ready in some fatal moment to attempt."
And this brings us back to the last and most important of Irish national rescue projects.