 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
THE DIRGE OF THE INVADERS;
OR, THE HOUSE NORMAN.
[_]
Among the churches sacked and burnt by Dermod and his Norman allies, was that of the Monastery of Kells, to which the headship of the great Order of St. Columba had been transferred several centuries previously, when Iona was wasted by the Danes. The monks are here supposed to have been interrupted, while celebrating the obsequies of their slaughtered brethren, by the return of the despoilers.
I
The walls are black: but the floor is red!Blood!—there is blood on the convent floor!
Woe to the mighty: that blood they shed:
Woe, woe, de Bohun! Woe, woe, le Poer!
Fitz-Walter, beware! the years are strong:
De Burgh, de Burgh! God rights the wrong.
Ye have murder'd priests: the hour draws nigh
When your sons unshriven, without priest, shall die.
II
Toll for the Mighty Ones: brethren toll!They stand astonish'd! what seek they here?
7
But the yellow lights shake not around the bier.
They are here unbidden!—stand back, ye proud!
God shapes the empires as wind the cloud.
The offence must come: but the deed is sin:
Toll the death-bell: the death-psalms begin.
III
The happy Dead with God find rest:For them no funeral bell we toll.
Fitz-Hugh! Death sits upon thy crest!
De Clare! Death sits upon thy soul!
Toll, monks, the death-bell; toll for them
Who masque under helmet and diadem:
Death's masque is Sin. The living are they
Who live with God in eternal day!
IV
Fitz-Maurice is sentenced! Sound, monks, his knell!As Roderick fell must de Courcy fall.
Toll for Fitz-Gerald the funeral bell:
The blood of O'Ruark is on Lacy's wall.
The lions are ye of the robber kind!
But when ye lie old in your dens and blind
The wolves and the jackals on you shall prey,
From the same shore sent. Beware that day!
V
Toll for the Conquerors: theirs the doom!For the great House Norman: its bud is nipt!
Ah, princely House, when your hour is come
Your dirge shall be sung not in church but crypt!
8
Than yours that day will forbid the dirge!
Two thousand years to the Gael God gave:
Four hundred shall open the Norman's grave!
Thus with threne and with stern lament
For their brethren dead the old monks made moan
In the convent of Kells, the first day of Lent,
One thousand one hundred and seventy-one.
For their brethren dead the old monks made moan
In the convent of Kells, the first day of Lent,
One thousand one hundred and seventy-one.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |