SO they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,
A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;
Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,
And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;
All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,
With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,
Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,
Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,
Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,
Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;
With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,
With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,
You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?
You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;
You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,
And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;
But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,
The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,
A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,
So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.
HURRAH! we stand on Irish land,
Our hated foe before us,
And once for all, to rise or fall,
The green flag flying o’er us,
We’ve raised it proudly overhead.
God prosper our endeavor,
Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,
To keep it there forever!
We marched away at break of day,
And sweethearts left behind us,
To strike one blow at yon false foe,
Whose rusty fetters bind us.
For while we bear the name of men,
We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,
Oh, Ireland shall be free again,
Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!
We’ve listened long to traitors mean,
False England’s scarlet praising;
We’ve heard them mock our Irish green
Until our blood seemed blazing!
And chieftains, too, who should be true,
Have kept our ranks asunder,
But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned
In Freedom’s battle-thunder!
Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,
No matter who may lead ’em,
And here’s a curse on every slave
Who mars the cause of freedom!
Let leaders vain aside remain
Until their feuds are ended,
’Tis by the man who knows no clan
Our flag must be defended.
We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,
From Limerick’s walls to Derry,
Bold ramblers from the County Clare
And mountaineers from Kerry.
We’ll chase our alien foes away,
We’ll tear our bonds asunder;
We care not who’s to lead to-day,
We’ll fight and conquer under!
THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.[D]
FAR away from the home and the friends they love best,
’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;
Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot
Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!
In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,
With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;
And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,
On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!
Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,
True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,
With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree—
Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!
When they took them away from that desolate place,
They found death had left a bright smile on each face,
So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see
How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!
For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind
The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;
And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,
Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!
Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,
Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;
And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave
Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!
DEATH’S VICTORY.
IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.
THE Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;
The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;
For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,
And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.
But with these ’tis not death—for through every age,
In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,
In the stories they tell, the examples they give,
Of Genius and Truth—he will live! he will live!
With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine
To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;
In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,
To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.
But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace
The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,
The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,
That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?
Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave
Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;
No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed—
He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.
THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.
BEAR it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,
On, on, through the smoke and the glare;
Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,
We will plant it triumphantly there.
Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,
’Twas lost at the base of the hill,
See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,
Our flag waves triumphantly still!
We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,
In sunshine and shower, side by side;
To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,
Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;
And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,
Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,
And our foes even then shall behold that above us
Our flag waves triumphantly still!
’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;
The flag that our children shall bear
When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder
Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.
’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,
And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill
To see in the land of their love and devotion
Our flag wave triumphantly still.
THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.
COME kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and
from North,
Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!
It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak
The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;
It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,
From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,
With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,
To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.
Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?
Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?
Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod
By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?
’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,
Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?
No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand
For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!
By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those
Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;
By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;
By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;
By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,
And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,
Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,
Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!
HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.
AROUSE ye from your slumbering,
Awake to life once more,
The time for idle pleadings
And for vain regrets is o’er;
We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,
But in a fight like men,
With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms
We’ll win our own again.
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!
Till death we stand,
To make our land
A nation proud and free.
We bent unto the tyrant,
And we prayed in vain for years,
But now we’re going to try, boys,
Rifle-balls instead of tears.
Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,
The rolling of the drum,
And in future our petitions
From the cannon’s mouth shall come.—Hurrah!
From Galway right to Wicklow,
And from Cork to Donegal,
We’ll march once more for liberty
To win it or to fall.
We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,
And guard it with our steel;
We’ll show our foes what deadly blows
Each Irish arm can deal.—Hurrah!
In ages past the redcoats quailed
Before our fathers’ might;
Have we not still the courage left
To battle for the right?
Though cowards dread the troops in red,
We’ll cross their steel with joy,
And show that Irish valor was
Not spent at Fontenoy.
The wily knave, the coward slave,
To home and life may cling,
But there’s no place for falsehood’s face
Where gleaming sabres ring!
We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage
For Freedom and for Right;
Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,
Our last appeal is fight!
THE MESSENGER.
NOVEMBER 23, 1867.[E]
WITH bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there—
Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;
We questioned him with eager eyes—we had not power to speak,
For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!
Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,
We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;
And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,
While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!
And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,
And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;
A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,
That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!
And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might
Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;
Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,
Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel—
Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,
Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face—
Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,
It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!
Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,
And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;
What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,
For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!
He,[F] boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod
The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;
Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,
With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!
And he,[G] the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d
Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;
And such a death—the felon’s death—the death that villains die—
He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!
And, last of all, the father,[H] who that day would leave behind
Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:
No wonder if he faltered—’twas, oh God! a fearful test;
Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.
And these are murderers, they say—are cowards, base and vile:
These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle—
Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!
Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.
A TYPICAL TRIAL.
JOSEPH O’GRABALL, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in
the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace
and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid
offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I
shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real
cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably
one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional
magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found
temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed
into law.
Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality
decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,
but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to
nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing
faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest
provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can
tell an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of
his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side
with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every
individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He
is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and
arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a
mustache.
Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life
lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a
simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is
little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless
there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting
this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no
leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But
the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to
arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,
unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to
his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?
Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A
goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about
Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might
have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in
enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.
With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark April night a
sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,
and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,
they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty
nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the
indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,
which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary
evidence.
“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”
“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.
“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,
and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to
destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious
Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of
England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and
the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.
“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset
or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the
ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”
“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”
“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”
“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before
my men. Come along.”
Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and utterly amazed and
confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,
where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into
the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones
what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality
a rich burlesque:—
“Prisoner, what is your name?”
“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”
“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have
been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of
such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a
note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is
correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”
“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”
“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male
gender?”
“He wore breeches, anyhow.”
“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,
make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the
customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case
is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,
prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“And this hammer?”
“Yes, your lordship.”
“And these nails?”
“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”
“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and
this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and
revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your
diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how
far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of
your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do
you say?”
“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood
with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens
be his bed; and the nails—the nails—the troth, I don’t know what I
wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the
sarjent.”
“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.
The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police
barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand
grenades.”
“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but
he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient
magistrate proceeded:—
“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”
“Yes, your washup.”
“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?”
“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”
“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter—a very
important letter—from New York. Where did you discover that?”
“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”
“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream
of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,
prisoner, what is this drawing?”
“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was
thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so
proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”
“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with
the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,
with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that
the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through
that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”
“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat
should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking
you are.”
“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter
is dated New York—the most treasonable locality on the face of the
earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother—(of course you’re all brothers.
Sergeant, make a note of that)—I write these few lines hoping they will
find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.
(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I
cannot discern it just now.) I met the ould man—(Rossa, I suppose.
Make a note, sergeant)—on landing. He would advise you not to kill the
ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old—oh! horrible! I see it all. They have
actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You
might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,
to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the
rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means—they begin with the
same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he
mean by that?”
“Um—um—yourself, I think, your washup.”
“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel
would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the
overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed
further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world
might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such
desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,
I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence
with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the
highest sentence in my power—three months’ imprisonment—and, sergeant,
just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”
Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither
himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought
his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was
convicted. And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of
the coercion act.
JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.
OH pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;
And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright
That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night—
An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.
I am very, very sorry for the Alabama’s pranks,
I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,
But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,
Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.
As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,
Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;
To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,
And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.
But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare
Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,
And send his best establishments cavorting through the air—
Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.
Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,
A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.
Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,
And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.
There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,
Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,
And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,
Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.
Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,
I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.
And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,
Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.
But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,
Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,
Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,
Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.
THE STORY OF A BOMB.
WHERE Shannon’s waves with smiling face
Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,
A modest cabin stood beside
Its gentle perfume-laden tide.
The sunshine of an honest life,
A prattling child, a loving wife,
The joys of home, their blessings shed
Around the peasant tenant’s head.
The twinkling stars of summer skies
Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,
His baby’s locks the noonday rays
Encircled with a golden haze.
But drear December, dark and chill,
Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,
Sickness and famine scourged the land;
And in their train the landlord band,
And aiding in their mission dire
The liveried hounds in England’s hire.
In one brief hour their work was o’er,
A happy home was home no more.
The wintry skies looked sadly down,
Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,
Upon the babe that sobbed to rest
Upon its dying mother’s breast.
A week—a month—he had no power
To mark or count each anguished hour,
He knew not if ’twere night or day
When wife and infant passed away.
Without a hope to dull the pain
That numbed his heart and seared his brain,
Despair behind and gloom before,
He left his native Shannon’s shore,
Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press
The ship’s dark side with fond caress,
While chimes from many a distant bell
Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.
Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,
With earnest faces fierce and grim,
Are gathered near a silent swamp,
Rough toilers from a mining camp;
The rasping tones of Ulster greet
The voice of Munster soft and sweet,
And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,
But one and all are Ireland’s friends.
Yet whispering pines that bend above
Hear words of hatred, not of love;
Tears that from eyes of strong men fall
Are not of mercy, but of gall.
Each has a sickening tale to tell
Of England’s robber rule of hell,
Each has a deeply cherished cause
To hate her power and curse her laws.
“Then who will venture life, and go
To wreak our vengeance on this foe,
Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”
And he from Shannon answers “I!”
The western breezes catch the vow
That surges from his bosom now,
The exile’s vengeful brand to bear
And smite the tiger in his lair.
In Babylonian halls to-night
Are strains of mirth and flashing light,
The sheen of satin, gleaming gems
In scores of priceless diadems;
These are the butterflies, the drones,
Vampires who feed on blood and bones.
Ah, cruel parasites, beware,
One victim of your wrong is there.
The London skies are black with cloud
The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,
As by the despot’s citadel
A hand from Shannon fires the shell.
England, to thee and thine belongs
The memory of uncounted wrongs
That, multiplied through all the years,
Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.
Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,
Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold
Can turn the wrath thou hast defied
Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.
Thy future sky is overcast,
Thy halcyon days forever past,
Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm
Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.
AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).
AVENGING, though dim, with the dust of inaction,
And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,
With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,
And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,
The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,
Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,
To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,
That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.
The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,
With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,
But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number
That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.
And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,
To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,
The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow
The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.
CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).
CHRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity,
Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,
Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,
We should be happy—for Christmas is here.
Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,
We have no heart for festivities gay—
Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,
Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.
Oh, dear! what will become of us?
Will they blow up every man or but some of us?
Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!
Give us a rest—we are pining away.
Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior
To the dread terrors that nightly control
All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,
Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!
Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,
Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,
For we may not place a moment’s dependency
How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!
O Lord! but the immensity
Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity
Splits through the dullest official head’s density,
Turning our locks into premature gray.
Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,
Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,
Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,
Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.
How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,
When it may shortly be scattered around,
With scarce a prospect—oh future precarious!
That a brass button would ever be found?
Oh, dear! is there a river in
England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in
Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in
Each beating heart that is left above ground?
IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).
OH, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears
Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,
Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?
The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?
In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom
Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;
See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown—
God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!
Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons
Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,
And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear
Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;
Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow
That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?
Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,
God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!
Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest
From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;
May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped
Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;
For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,
Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,
Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;
So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!
JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.