Poems - Denis Florence MacCarthy (good books to read .txt) 📗

of the breast; Be it ours, with fond desiring,
The same harvest to produce, As the cloud in its aspiring
And the river in its use.


Centenary Odes.


O'CONNELL. AUGUST 6TH, 1875.

Harp of my native land That lived anew 'neath Carolan's master hand; Harp on whose electric chords, The minstrel Moore's melodious words, Each word a bird that sings, Borne as if on Ariel's wings,
Touched every tender soul
From listening pole to pole. Sweet harp, awake once more: What, though a ruder hand disturbs thy rest,
A theme so high
Will its own worth supply. As finest gold is ever moulded best: Or as a cannon on some festive day, When sea and sky, when winds and waves rejoice, Out-booms with thunderous voice, Bids echo speak, and all the hills obey-

So let the verse in echoing accents ring,
So proudly sing,
With intermittent wail, The nation's dead, but sceptred King, The glory of the Gael.


1775.

Six hundred stormy years have flown, Since Erin fought to hold her own, To hold her homes, her altars free, Within her wall of circling sea. No year of all those years had fled, No day had dawned that was not red, (Oft shed by fratricidal hand), With the best blood of all the land. And now, at last, the fight seemed o'er, The sound of battle pealed no more; Abject the prostrate people lay, Nor dared to hope a better day; An icy chill, a fatal frost, Left them with all but honour lost, Left them with only trust in God, The lands were gone their fathers owned; Poor pariahs on their native sod. Their faith was banned, their prophets stoned; Their temples crowning every height, Now echoed with an alien rite, Or silent lay each mouldering pile, With shattered cross and ruined aisle. Letters denied, forbade to pray, And white-winged commerce scared away: Ah, what can rouse the dormant life That still survives the stormier strife? What potent charm can once again Relift the cross, rebuild the fane? Free learning from felonious chains, And give to youth immortal gains? What signal mercy from on high?- Hush! hark! I hear an infant's cry, The answer of a new-born child, From Iveragh's far mountain wild.

Yes, 'tis the cry of a child, feeble and faint in the night,
But soon to thunder in tones that will rouse both tyrants and slaves. Yes, 'tis the sob of a stream just awake in its source on the height,
But soon to spread as a sea, and rush with the roaring of waves.

Yes, 'tis the cry of a child affection hastens to still,
But what shall silence ere long the victor voice of the man? Easy it is for a branch to bar the flow of the rill,
But all the forest would fail where raging the torrent once ran.

And soon the torrent will run, and the pent-up waters o'erflow,
For the child has risen to a man, and a shout replaces the cry; And a voice rings out through the world, so wing`ed with Erin's woe,
That charmed are the nations to listen, and the Destinies to reply.

Boyhood had passed away from that child, predestined by fate
To dry the eyes of his mother, to end the worst of her ills, And the terrible record of wrong, and the annals of hell and hate,
Had gathered into his breast like a lake in the heart of the hills.

Brooding over the past, he found himself but a slave,
With manacles forged on his mind, and fetters on every limb; The land that was life to others, to him was only a grave,
And however the race he ran no victor wreath was for him.

The fane of learning was closed, shut out was the light of day,
No ray from the sun of science, no brightness from Greece or Rome, And those who hungered for knowledge, like him, had to fly away,
Where bountiful France threw wide the gates that were shut at home.

And there he happily learned a lore far better than books,
A lesson he taught for ever, and thundered over the land, That Liberty's self is a terror, how lovely may be her looks,
If religion is not in her heart, and reverence guide not her hand.

The steps of honour were barred: it was not for him to climb,
No glorious goal in the future, no prize for the labour of life, And the fate of him and his people seemed fixed for all coming time
To hew the wood of the helot and draw the waters of strife.

But the glorious youth returning
Back from France the fair and free, Rage within his bosom burning,
Such a servile sight to see,
Vowed to heaven it should not be. "No!" the youthful champion cried, "Mother Ireland, widowed bride, If thy freedom can be won By the service of a son,
Then, behold that son in me. I will give thee every hour, Every day shall be thy dower, In the splendour of the light, In the watches of the night, In the shine and in the shower, I shall work but for thy right."


1782-1800.

A dazzling gleam of evanescent glory,
Had passed away, and all was dark once more, One golden page had lit the mournful story,
Which ruthless hands with envious rage out-tore.

One glorious sun-burst, radiant and far-reaching,
Had pierced the cloudy veil dark ages wove, When full-armed Freedom rose from Grattan's teaching,
As sprang Minerva from the brain of Jove.

Oh! in the transient light that had outbroken,
How all the land with quickening fire was lit! What golden words of deathless speech were spoken,
What lightning flashes of immortal wit!

Letters and arts revived beneath its beaming,
Commerce and Hope outspread their swelling sails, And with "Free Trade" upon their standard gleaming,
Now feared no foes and dared adventurous gales.

Across the stream the graceful arch extended,
Above the pile the rounded dome arose, The soaring spire to heaven's high vault ascended,
The loom hummed loud as bees at evening's close.

And yet 'mid all this hope and animation,
The people still lay bound in bigot chains, Freedom that gave some slight alleviation,
Could dare no panacea for their pains.

Yet faithful to their country's quick uprising,
Like some fair island from volcanic waves, They shared the triumph though their claims despising,
And hailed the freedom though themselves were slaves.

But soon had come the final compensation,
Soon would the land one brotherhood have known, Had not some spell of hellish incantation
The new-formed fane of Freedom overthrown.

In one brief hour the fair mirage had faded,
No isle of flowers lay glad on ocean's green, But in its stead, deserted and degraded,
The barren strand of Slavery's shore was seen.


1800-1829.

Yet! 'twas on that barren strand Sing his praise throughout the world!
Yet, 'twas on that barren strand, O'er a cowed and broken band,
That his solitary hand
Freedom's flag unfurled. Yet! 'twas there in Freedom's cause,
Freedom from unequal laws,
Freedom for each creed and class,
For humanity's whole mass,
That his voice outrang;-
And the nation at a bound,
Stirred by the inspiring sound,
To his side up-sprang.

Then the mighty work began, Then the war of thirty years- Peaceful war, when words were spears, And religion led the van. When O'Connell's voice of power, Day by day and hour by hour, Raining down its iron shower,
Laid oppression low, Till at length the war was o'er, And Napoleon's conqueror, Yielded to a mightier foe.


1829.

Into the senate swept the mighty chief,
Like some great ocean wave across the bar
Of intercepting rock, whose jagged reef
But frets the victor whom it cannot mar.
Into the senate his triumphal car
Rushed like a conqueror's through the broken gates
Of some fallen city, whose defenders are
Powerful no longer to resist the fates, But yield at last to him whom wondering Fame awaits.

And as "sweet foreign Spenser" might have sung,
Yoked to the car two wing`ed steeds were seen,
With eyes of fire and flashing hoofs outflung,
As if Apollo's coursers they had been.
These were quick Thought and Eloquence, I ween,
Bounding together with impetuous speed,
While overhead there waved a flag of green,
Which seemed to urge still more each flying steed, Until they reached the goal the hero had decreed.

There at his feet a captive wretch lay bound,
Hideous, deformed, of baleful countenance,
Whom as his blood-shot eye-balls glared around,
As if to kill with their malignant glance,
I knew to be the fiend Intolerance.
But now no longer had he power to slay,
For Freedom touched him with Ithuriel's lance,
His horrid form revealing by its ray, And showed how foul a fiend the world could once obey.

Then followed after him a numerous train,
Each bearing trophies of the field he won:
Some the white wand, and some the civic chain,
Its golden letters glistening in the sun;
Some-for the reign of justice had begun-
The ermine robes that soon would be the prize
Of spotless lives that all pollution shun,
And some in mitred pomp, with upturned eyes, And grateful hearts invoked a blessing from the skies.


1843-1847.

A glorious triumph! a deathless deed!-
Shall the hero rest and his work half done? Is it enough to enfranchise a creed,
When a nation's freedom may yet be won? Is it enough to hang on the wall
The broken links of the Catholic chain, When now one mighty struggle for ALL
May quicken the life in the land again?-

May quicken the life, for the land lay dead;
No central fire was a heart in its breast,- No throbbing veins, with the life-blood red,
Ran out like rivers to east