University of Virginia Library

Sonnets.

I. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION OF 1782.

Nobles of Ireland! they your work arraign
That won your victory! Lightning-like the thrill
Of Liberty speeds on! O land, be still!
Your patriots toiled, your vales rejoice in vain.
‘Our Nation wears no more the servile stain!
Our People turns no more the Conqueror's mill!’
Nation and People have ye none! Your Will
Tyrannic knits anew the severed chain!
Nobles of Ireland that would fain be free
Set free your Irish Helots! From that hour
Nation and People equalled shall ye stand
With England, side to side, or brand to brand!
Boast not till then a Freedom void of Power:
A laughing Devil mocks such Liberty!

II. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

What man can check the aspiring life that thrills
And glows through all this multitudinous wood;
That throbs in each minutest leaf and bud,
And, like a mighty wave ascending, fills
More high each day with flowers the encircling hills?
From earth's maternal heart her ancient blood
Mounts to her breast in milk! her breath doth brood
O'er fields Spring-flashed round unimprisoned rills!
Such life is also in the breast of Man;
Such blood is at the heart of every Nation
Not to be chained by Statesman's frown or ban.
Hope and be strong: fear and be weak! The seed
Is sown: be ours the prosperous growth to feed
With food, not poison—Christian Education!

III. IRELAND AND THE ‘ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES ACT.’

The statesmen of this day I deem a tribe
That dwarf-like strut, a pageant on a stage
Theirs but in pomp and outward equipage,
Ruled inly by the herd or hireling scribe.
They have this skill, the Power they dread to bribe:
This courage, war upon the weak to wage:
To turn from self a Nation's ignorant rage:
To unstaunch old wounds with edict or with jibe.
Ireland! The unwise one saw thee in the dust
Crowned with eclipse, and garmented with night,
And in his hear the said, ‘For her no day!’
But thou long since hadst placed in God thy trust,
And knew'st that in the under-world, all light,
Thy sun moved eastward. Watch! that East grows grey!