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327

POEMS FOR THE MOST PART CONNECTED WITH THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE, 1846—1849.

328

TO THOSE WHO LABOURED FOR THE POOR OF IRELAND IN THE DAY OF THEIR DISTRESS.
329

Sonnets.

IRISH COLONIZATION.

WRITTEN DURING IRELAND'S ‘GREAT FAMINE.’

I

Fell the tall pines. Thou nobler Argo, leap
Wide-winged deliverer, on the ocean floods;
And westward waft the astonished multitudes
That rot inert and hideous Sabbath keep
Or, stung to madness, guiltier ruin heap
On their own heads. No longer fabled Gods
Subdue vext waves with tridents and pearl rods;
Yet round that bark heroic, Gods shall sweep
And guard an infant Nation. Hope shall flush
With far Hesperean welcome billows hoary:
Valour and virtue, love and joy, and glory
A storm-borne Iris, shall before you rush;
And there descending, where your towers shall stand
Look back full faced and shout, ‘Britannia, land!’

II

I heard, in deep prophetic trance immersed,
The wave, keel-cut kissing the ship's dark side:
Anon men shouted and the cliffs replied:
O what a vision from the darkness burst!
330

Europe so fair a city never nursed
As met me there! It clasped in crescent wide
The gulf, it crowned the isles, the subject tide
O'er-strode with bridges and with quays coerced.
In marble from unnumbered mountains robed,
With altar-shaped Acropolis and crest
There sat the queenly City throned and globed:
Full well that beaming countenance expressed
The soul of a great People. From its eye
Shone forth a second Britain's empery.

III

How looks a mother on her babe, a bard
On some life-laboured song? With humble pride
And self-less love and joy to awe allied:
So should a State that severed self regard,
Her child beyond the waves. Great Nature's ward,
And Time's, that child one day with God for guide,
Shall waft its parent's image far and wide;
Yea, and its Maker's if by sin unmarred.
Conquest I deem a vulgar pastime: trade
Shifts like the winds; and power but comes to go;
But this is glorious, o'er the earth to sow
The seed of Nations; darkness to invade
With light; to plant, where silence reigned and death
The thrones of British Law and towers of Christian Faith.
331

IV

England, magnanimous art thou in name:
Magnanimous in nature once thou wert;
But that which ofttimes lags behind desert
And crowns the dead, as oft survives it—fame.
Can she whose hand a merchant's pen makes tame
Or sneer of nameless scribe; can she whose heart
In camp or senate still is at the mart
A Nation's toils a Nation's honours claim?
Thy shield of old torn Poland twice and thrice
Invoked: thy help as vainly Ireland asks
Pointing with stark, lean finger, from the crest
Of western cliffs plague-stricken to the West
Grey-haired though young. When heat is sucked from ice,
Then shall a Firm discharge a Nation's tasks.
 

For the very large Private Charities of England during the Famine Years, Ireland has ever been grateful. Neither did the public policy then adopted lack liberality. But, in spite of the warnings of Ireland's wisest sons, grievous mistakes were made.

THE YEAR OF SORROW—IRELAND—1849.

I.—SPRING.

I

Once more, through God's high will, and grace
Of hours that each its task fulfils,
Heart-healing Spring resumes her place
The valley throngs and scales the hills;
332

II

In vain. From earth's deep heart o'ercharged
The exulting life runs o'er in flowers;
The slave unfed is unenlarged:
In darkness sleep a Nation's powers.

III

Who knows not Spring? Who doubts, when blows
Her breath, that Spring is come indeed?
The swallow doubts not; nor the rose
That stirs, but wakes not; nor the weed.

IV

I feel her near but see her not;
For these with pain uplifted eyes
Fall back repulsed, and vapours blot
The vision of the earth and skies.

V

I see her not: I feel her near,
As, charioted in mildest airs
She sails through yon empyreal sphere
And in her arms and bosom bears

VI

That urn of flowers and lustral dews
Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed
Revives the weak, the old renews
And crowns with votive wreaths the dead.

VII

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear;
I know, in many a glen profound
The earliest violets of the year
Rise up like water from the ground.
333

VIII

The thorn I know once more is white;
And, far down many a forest dale
The anemones in dubious light
Are trembling like a bridal veil.

IX

By streams released that singing flow
From craggy shelf through sylvan glades
The pale narcissus, well I know,
Smiles hour by hour on greener shades.

X

The honeyed cowslip tufts once more
The golden slopes; with gradual ray
The primrose stars the rock and o'er
The wood-path strews its milky way.

XI

From ruined huts and holes come forth
Old men, and look upon the sky!
The Power Divine is on the earth:
Give thanks to God before ye die!

XII

And ye, O children worn and weak
Who care no more with flowers to play
Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek,
And those slight hands, and whispering, say,

XIII

‘Stern Mother of a race unblest,
In promise kindly, cold in deed,
Take back, O Earth, into thy breast
The children whom thou wilt not feed.’
334

II.—SUMMER.

I

Approved by works of love and might
The Year, consummated and crowned,
Has scaled the zenith's purple height
And flings his robe the earth around.

II

Impassioned stillness—fervours calm—
Brood vast and bright o'er land and deep:
The warrior sleeps beneath the palm;
The dark-eyed captive guards his sleep.

III

The Iberian labourer rests from toil;
Sicilian virgins twine the dance;
Laugh Tuscan vales in wine and oil;
Fresh laurels flash from brows of France.

IV

Far off in regions of the North
The hunter drops his winter fur;
Sun-stricken babes their feet stretch forth;
And nested dormice feebly stir.

V

But thou, O land of many woes!
What cheer is thine? Again the breath
Of proved Destruction o'er thee blows
And sentenced fields grow black in death.
335

VI

In horror of a new despair
His blood-shot eyes the peasant strains
With hands clenched fast and lifted hair
Along the daily-darkening plains.

VII

Behold, O People! thou shalt die!
What art thou better than thy sires?
The hunted deer a weeping eye
Turns on his birthplace, and expires.

VIII

Lo! as the closing of a book
Or statue from its base o'erthrown
Or blasted wood or dried-up brook
Name, race, and nation, thou art gone.

IX

The stranger shall thy hearth possess;
The stranger build upon thy grave.
But know this also—he, not less
His limit and his term shall have.

X

Once more thy volume open cast
In thunder forth shall sound thy name;
Thy forest, hot at heart, at last
God's breath shall kindle into flame.

XI

Thy brook dried up a cloud shall rise
And stretch an hourly widening hand
In God's high judgement through the skies
And onward o'er the Invader's land.
336

XII

Of thine, one day, a remnant left
Shall raise o'er earth a Prophet's rod
And teach far coasts of Faith bereft
The names of Ireland, and of God.

III.—AUTUMN.

I

Then die, thou Year; thy work is done:
The work ill done is done at last;
Far off, beyond that sinking sun
Which sets in blood, I hear the blast

II

That sings thy dirge, and says, ‘Ascend,
And answer make amid thy peers
Since all things here must have an end,
Thou latest of the famine years!’

III

I join that voice. No joy have I
In all thy purple and thy gold
Nor in that nine-fold harmony
From forest on to forest rolled;

IV

Nor in that stormy western fire,
Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed,
And hurls as from a funeral pyre
A glare that strikes the mountain's head;
337

V

And writes on low-hung clouds its lines
Of cyphered flame with hurrying hand,
And flings amid the topmost pines
That crown the steep a burning brand.

VI

Make answer, Year, for all thy dead,
Who found not rest in hallowed earth,
The widowed wife, the father fled
The babe age-stricken from its birth.

VII

Make answer, Year, for virtue lost,
For courage proof 'gainst fraud and force
Now waning like a noontide ghost,
Affections poisoned at their source.

VIII

The labourer spurned his lying spade;
The yeoman spurned his useless plough;
The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid
Obtruded once exhausted now.

IX

Dread Power Unknown! Whom mortal years
Nor touch, nor tempt; Who sitt'st sublime
In night of night, O bid thy spheres
Resound at last a funeral chime!

X

Call up at last the afflicted race
Whose Sorrow nears its ending.—Sore,
For centuries, their strife: the place
That knew them once shall know no more!
338

IV.—WINTER.

I

Fall, snow, and cease not! Flake by flake
The decent winding-sheet compose:
Thy task is just and pious; make
An end of blasphemies and woes.

II

Fall flake by flake! by thee alone
Last friend, the sleeping draught is given:
Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strewn
The couch whose covering is from heaven.

III

Descend and clasp the mountain's crest;
Inherit plain and valley deep:
This night on thy maternal breast
A vanquished nation dies in sleep.

IV

Lo! from the starry Temple Gates
Death rides and bears the flag of peace:
The combatants he separates;
He bids the wrath of ages cease.

V

Descend, benignant Power! But O
Ye torrents, shake no more the vale,
Dark streams, in silence seaward flow:
Thou rising storm remit thy wail.
339

VI

Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher
Nor Brandon's base, rough sea! Thou Isle,
The Rite proceeds! From shore to shore
Hold in thy gathered breath the while.

VII

Fall, snow! in stillness fall, like dew
On church's roof and cedar's fan;
And mould thyself on pine and yew
And on the awful face of man.

VIII

Without a sound, without a stir,
In streets and wolds, on rock and mound
O, omnipresent Comforter
By thee, this night, the lost are found!

IX

On quaking moor, and mountain moss
With eyes upstaring at the sky
And arms extended like a cross
The long-expectant sufferers lie.

X

Bend o'er them, white-robed Acolyte!
Put forth thine hand from cloud and mist!
And minister the last sad Rite,
Where altar there is none, nor priest.

XI

Touch thou the gates of soul and sense;
Touch darkening eyes and dying ears;
Touch stiffening hands and feet, and thence
Remove the trace of sins and tears.
340

XII

And ere thou seal those filmèd eyes
Into God's urn thy fingers dip,
And lay, 'mid eucharistic sighs,
The sacred wafer on the lip.

XIII

This night the Absolver issues forth:
This night the Eternal Victim bleeds:
O winds and woods! O heaven and earth!
Be still this night. The Rite proceeds!

WIDOWHOOD.

1848.
Not thou alone, but all things fair and good
Live here bereft in vestal widowhood
Or wane in radiant circlet incomplete.
Memory, in widow's weeds, with naked feet
Stands on a tombstone. Hope, with tearful eyes
Stares all night long on unillumined skies.
Virtue, an orphan, begs from door to door:
Beside a cold hearth on a stranger's floor
Sits exiled Honour. Song, a vacant type
Hangs on that tree, whose fruitage ne'er was ripe
Her harp, and bids the casual wind thereon
Lament what might be, fabling what is gone.
Our childhood's world of wonder melts like dew;
Youth's guardian genius bids our youth adieu
And oft the wedded is a widow too.
The best of bridals here is but a troth;
Only in heaven is ratified the oath:
341

There, there alone, is clasped in full fruition
That sacred joy which passed not Eden's gates,
For here the soul is mocked with dream and vision,
And outward sense, uniting, separates.
The Bride of Brides, a maid and widow here,
Invokes her Lord, and finds—a Comforter:
Her loftiest fane is but a visible porch
To sealed Creation's omnipresent Church.
Zealous that nobler gifts than earth's should live
Fortune I praise; but praise her, fugitive.
The Roman praised her permanent; but we
Have learned her lore, and paid a heavy fee,
Have tracked her promise to its brake of wiles,
And sounded all the shallows of her smiles.
Fortune not gives but sells, and takes instead
A heart made servile, and a discrowned head.
Too soon she comes, and drowns in swamps of sloth
The soul contemplative and active; both;
Or comes too late and, with malignant art
Leaps on the lance that rives the sufferer's heart
Showering her affluence on a breast supine.
Her best of gifts the usurer's seal and sign
Sustain, and pawn man's life to Destiny.
Ah! mightier things than man like man can die!
Between the ruin and the work half done
I sit: the raw wreck is the sorrier one.
Here drops old Desmond's Keep in slow decay:
There the unfinished Mole is washed away.
The moment's fickle promise, and the vast
And consummated greatness, both are past.
342

We sink, and none is better for our fall:
We suffer most: but suffering comes to all:
Our sighs but echoes are of earlier sighs;
And in our agonies we plagiarize.
O'er all the earth old States in ruin lie,
And new Ambitions topple from their sky:
Greatness walks lame while clad in mortal mould;
The good are weak: unrighteous are the bold.
Love by Self-love is murdered, or Distrust;
And earth-born Virtue has its ‘dust to dust.’
This Ireland knows. The famine years go by,
And each its ranks of carnage heaps more high:
What voice once manly and what hand once strong
Arraigns, resists, or mitigates the wrong?
The future shall be as the present hour:
The havoc past, again the slaves of Power
Shall boast because once more the harvest waves
In fraudulent brightness o'er a million graves.
Why weep for ties once ours, relaxed or broken?
If weep we must, our tears are all bespoken:
One thing is worthy of them, one alone—
A world's inherent baseness; and our own.
Type of my country, sad, and chaste, and wise!
Forgive the gaze of too regardful eyes:
I saw the black robe, and the aspect pale
And heard in dream that country's dying wail.
Like Night her form arose: as shades in night
Are lost thy sorrowing beauty vanished from my sight.
 

‘Laudo manentem.’—Horace.

343

THE LAST IRISH GAEL TO THE LAST IRISH NORMAN;

OR, THE LAST IRISH CONFISCATION.

A PREDICTION, 1848.

Your bark in turn is freighted. O'er the seas
You seek a refuge at the Antipodes.
Australia waits you. O my Lord, beware!
Australia! Floats not England's standard there?
Tyrconnell and Tyrone found rest more nigh:
Shrined on St. Peter's Mount their ashes lie.
Their cause is mine—and foes, till now, were we;
Now friends, ashamed were I thy shame to see.
Has Ruin no decorum? Grief no sense?
Shall England house thee? England drives thee hence!
O worker of thy sorrows with a vow
Bind thou that head reduced, and careful brow
Wholly to root that idol from thy heart:
Swear that thy race never shall have a part
In aught that England boasts, achieves, confers:
Her past is thine—thy future is not hers.
Loosed from the agony of fruitless strife
You stand, a lost man 'mid the wreck of life
And round you gaze. Sad Eva also gazed
All round that bridal field of blood, amazed;
Spoused to new fortunes. But your head is grey!
Beyond your castle droops the dying day;
344

And, drifting down loose gusts of wailing wind,
Night comes with rain before and frost behind.
Lean men that groped for sea-weeds on the shore
All day, now hide in holes on fen and moor.
The cliffs lean forth their brows to meet the scourge
Of blast on blast: around their base the surge
Welters in shades from iron headlands thrown:
Through chasm and cave subaqueous thunders moan—
That sound thou lov'st! Once more the Desmonds fall:
To-night old Wrongs shake hands in History's hall;
And, clashing through responsive vaults of Time,
Old peals funereal marry chime to chime.
Of such no more! Beside your fireless hearth
Sit one night yet: and, moody or in mirth
Compare the past and present, and record
The fortunes of your Order in a word.
England first used, then spurned it! Hour by hour,
For centuries her laws, her fame, her power
Hung on its hand. It gloried to sustain
High o'er the clouds that sweep the Atlantic main,
The banner with her blazonries enrolled:
Then came the change, and ye were bought and sold:
Then came the change, and ye received your due.
Sir, to your country had ye proved as true
As to your England, she had held by you:
Ruin ye might have proved; ye might have known
Even then, the scorn of others—not your own!
Pardon hard words. Your Race, not mine, is hard:
But wounds and work the hand too soft have scarred:
We are your elders—first-born in distress;
And century-seasoned woes grow pitiless.
345

Hierarchs are we in pain, where ye but learn:
We have an Unction, and our Rite is stern.
If on our brows still hang ancestral glooms,
Forgive the children of the Catacombs.
What have the dead to do with love or ruth?
I died; and live once more—I live for Truth:
Hope and delusion trouble me no more:
Therefore, expatriate on my native shore
Anguish and doubt shake other nerves, not mine:
I drop no tear into the bitter brine:
The world in which I move is masculine.
Why to Australia? Britain too was dear:
Must, then, the Britain of the southern sphere
Rack you in turn? Seek you once more to prove
The furies of a scorned, unnatural love
That cleaves to insult and on injury feeds
And, upon both cheeks stricken, burns and bleeds?
Son of the North, why seek you not once more
The coasts where sang the warrior Scald of yore?
If unhistoric regions you must tread,
Hallowed by no communion with the dead,
Never by saint, or sage, or hero trod;
Where never lifted fane upraised to God
In turn, the hearts of sequent generations,
Where never manly races rose to nations
Marshalled by knightly arm or kingly eye;
If with new fortunes a new earth you try,
Then seek, oh, seek her in her purity!
Drain not civilization's dregs and lees.
In many an island clipt by tropic seas,
Nature keeps yet a race by arts untamed,
Who live half-innocent and unashamed.
Ambition frets not them. In regions calm
346

Mid prairies vast, or under banks of palm,
They sing light wars and unafflicting loves
And vanish as the echo leaves the groves!
Smooth space divides their cradles and their graves:
What are they? Apparitions—casual waves
Heaved up in Time's successive harmony!
Brief smiles of nature followed by a sigh!
Why not with such abide awhile and die?
O, summoned ere thy death to that repose
The grave concedes to others! by thy foes
Franchised with that which friendship never gave;
A heart as free from tremors as the grave!
Last of a race whose helm and lance were known
In furthest lands—now exiled from thine own—
Give thanks! How many a sight is spared to thee
Which we, thy sires in suffering, saw and see!
Thou hast beheld thy country, by the shocks
Of sequent winters, driven upon the rocks
High and more high. Thou shalt not, day by day,
See her dismembered planks, the wrecker's prey
Abused without remorse to uses base:
Thou hast beheld the home of all thy race
Their lawns, their walks, and every grove and stream
Their very tombs—pass from thee like a dream
And leave thee bare. But thou shalt not behold
Thy woods devastated, nor gathering mould
Subdue the arms high hung and blight the bloom
Of pomps heraldic redd'ning scroll and tomb;
Nor the starred azure touched by mists cold-lipped
Till choir and aisle are black as vault and crypt,
Nor from the blazoned missal wane and faint
The golden age of martyr, maid, and saint,
347

Umbria's high pathos, and the Tuscan might
And all thy wondering childhood's world of light.
Thou shalt not see that Cross thou loved'st so well
From minster towers rock-built, and hermit's cell
Swept by the self-same blast that sent the hind
Shivering to caves, and struck a kingdom blind!
All that was thine, while seas between thee roll
And them, in some still cloister of thy soul
Shall live, as, in a mother's heart inisled
Lives on the painless memory of a child
Buried a babe. One image all shall make
Still as the gleam of sunset-lighted lake
Kenned from a tower o'er leagues of wood and lawn;
Or as perchance our planet looks, withdrawn
From some pure spirit that leaves her; to his sight
Lessening, not lost—a disk of narrowing light
Sole-hung in regions of pure space afar—
Of old the world he lived in, now a star!
But the wind swells yon sails. Why waste we breath?
My Lord, for thy soul's sake, and a good death
Forget the things a Gael's unmannered pen
For thee records not but for later men.
Since hope is gone, let peace be thine instead.
The snows which heap too soon that Norman head,
Should calm it, and a heart that bleeds for aye
Has less to lose, and less to feel, each day.
Seek not thy joys when on the desolate shore
The raked rocks thunder, and the caverns roar,
And the woods moan, while shoots the setting sun
Discords of angry lights o'er billows dun.
Make white thy thoughts as is a Vestal's sleep;
Bloodless: prolong, beside the murmuring deep,
348

Thy matutinal slumbers, till the bird
That tuned not broke them, is no longer heard.
The flowers the children of the Stranger bring
Indulgent take: permit their latest Spring
To lure from thee all bitterness and wrath:
Into Death's bosom, genial as a bath
Sink back absolved. Justice to God belongs:
Soul latest-stricken, leave with Him thy Wrongs!
Justice, o'er angels and o'er men supreme
Still in mid heaven sustains her balanced beam,
With whose vast scales, whether they sink or rise,
The poles of earth are forced to sympathize.
Unseen she rules, wrapped round in cloud and awe;
Her silence is the seal of mortal law;
Her voice the harmony of every sphere:
Most distant is she ever yet most near,
Most strong when least regarded. From her eyes
That light goes forth which cheers the brave and wise;
And in the arm that lifts aloft her sword
Whatever might abides on earth is stored.
Fret not thyself. Watch thou, and wait, her hand!
The thunder-drops fall fast. In every land
Humanity breathes quick, and coming storm
Looks through man's soul with flashes swift and warm:
The fiery trial and the shaken sieve
Shall prove the nations. What can live shall live.
Falsehood shall die; and falsehoods widest-based
Shall lie the lowest, though they fall the last.
Down from the mountain of their greatness hurled
What witness bear the Nations to the World?
349

Down rolled like rocks along the Alpine stairs
What warning voice is theirs, and ever theirs?
Their ears the Nations unsubverted close
For who would hear the voice whose words are Woes?
Woe to ancestral greatness, if the dower
Of knightly worth confirm no more its power.
Woe to commercial strength, if sensual greed
Heap up like waves its insolent gold, nor heed
What solid good rewards the poor man's toil.
Woe to the Monarch, if the unholy oil
Of smooth-tongued flattery be his balm and chrism.
Woe to the State cleft through by social schism.
Woe to Religion, when the birds obscene
Of Heresy from porch to altar-screen
Range free; while from the temple-eaves look down
Doubt's shadowy brood, ill-masked in cowl or gown.
Woe to the Rulers by the People ruled:
A People drowned in sense, and pride-befooled
Trampling were sages once, and martyrs, trod.
Ye Nations meet your doom, or serve at last your God!
 

St. Pietro in Montorio.

Irish Odes.

I. AFTER ONE OF IRELAND'S FAMINE YEARS.

I

The golden dome, the Tyrian dye
And all that yearning ocean
350

Yields from red caves to glorify
Ambition, or devotion
I leave them—leave the bank of Seine,
And those high towers that shade it
To tread my native fields again,
And muse on glories faded.

II

The monumental city stands
Around me in its vastness
Girdling the spoils of all the lands
In war's imperial fastness.
That stony scroll of every clime
Some record boasts or sample;
Cathedral piles of oldest time
Huge arch and pillared temple.

III

They charge across the field of Mars;
The earth beneath them shaking
As breaks a rocket into stars
The columned host is breaking:
It forms: it bursts:—new hosts succeed:
They sweep the Tuileries under:
The thunder from the Invalides
Answers the people's thunder.

IV

Behold! my heart is otherwhere,
My soul these pageants cheer not:
A cry from famished vales I hear,
That cry which others hear not.
351

Sad eyes, as of a noontide ghost,
Whose grief, not grace, first won me,
'Mid regal pomps ye haunt me most:
There most your power is on me.

V

Last night, what time the convent shades
Far-stretched, the pavement darkened
Where rose but late the barricades
Alone I stood, and hearkened;
Thy dove-note, O my country, thine,
In long-drawn modulation,
Went by me, linked with words divine
That stayed all earthly passion!

VI

A man entranced, and yet scarce sad,
Since then I see in vision
The scenes whereof my boyhood had
Possession, not fruition.
Dark shadows sweep the landscape o'er
Each other still pursuing;
And lights from sinking suns once more
Grow golden round the ruin.

VII

Dark violet hills extend their chains
Athwart the saffron even,
Pure purple stains not distant plains:
And earth is mixed with heaven:
One cloud o'er half the sunset broods;
And from its ragged edges
The wine-black shower descends like floods
Down dashed from diamond ledges.
352

VIII

Through rifted fanes the damp wind sweeps,
Chanting a dreary psalter:
I see the bones that rise in heaps
Where rose of old the altar;
Once more beside the blessed well
I see the cripple kneeling:
I hear the broken chapel bell
Where organs once were pealing.

IX

I come, and bring not help, for God
Withdraws not yet the chalice:
Still on your plains by martyrs trod
And o'er your hills and valleys,
His name a suffering Saviour writes—
Letters black-drawn, and graven
On lowly huts, and castled heights,
Dim haunts of newt and raven.

X

I come, and bring not song; for why
Should grief from fancy borrow?
Why should a lute prolong a sigh,
Sophisticating sorrow?
Dull opiates, down! To wind and wave,
Lethean weeds I fling you:
Anacreontics of the grave,
Not mine the heart to sing you!

XI

I come the breath of sighs to breathe,
Yet add not unto sighing
To kneel on graves, yet drop no wreath
On those in darkness lying.
353

Sleep, chaste and true, a little while,
The Saviour's flock, and Mary's:
And guard their reliques well, O Isle,
Thou chief of reliquaries!

XII

Blessed are they that claim no part
In this world's pomp and laughter:
Blessed the pure; the meek of heart:—
Blest here; more blest hereafter.
‘Blessed the mourners.’ Earthly goods
Are woes, the Master preaches:
Embrace thy sad beatitudes
And recognize thy riches!

XIII

And if, of every land the guest,
Thine exile back returning
Finds still one land unlike the rest
Discrowned, disgraced, and mourning,
Give thanks! Thy flowers, to yonder skies
Transferred pure airs are tasting;
And, stone by stone, thy temples rise
In regions everlasting.

XIV

Sleep well, unsung by idle rhymes
Ye sufferers late and lowly;
Ye saints and seers of earlier times
Sleep well in cloisters holy!
Above your bed the bramble bends
The yew tree and the alder:
Sleep well, O fathers, and O friends
And in your silence moulder!
354

II. THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE.

I

Hark, hark that chime! The frosts are o'er!
With song the birds force on the spring:
Thus, Ireland, sang thy bards of yore:
O younger bards, 'tis time to sing!
Your Country's smile that with the past
Lay dead so long—that vanished smile—
Evoke it from the dark and cast
Its light around a tearful isle!

II

Like severed locks that keep their light
When all the stately frame is dust
A Nation's songs preserve from blight
A Nation's name, their sacred trust.
Temple and pyramid eterne
May memorize her deeds of power;
But only from the songs we learn
How throbbed her life-blood hour by hour.

III

Thrice blest the strain that brings to one
Who weeps by some Australian rill
A worn out life far off begun
His Country's countenance beauteous still!
That 'mid Canadian wilds, or where
Rich-feathered birds are void of song,
Wafts back, 'mid gusts of Irish air
Old wood-notes loved and lost so long!
355

IV

Well might the Muse at times forsake
Her Grecian hill, and sit where swerve
In lines like those of Hebé's neck
That wood-girt bay, yon meadow's curve,
Watching the primrose clusters throw
Their wan light o'er that ivied cave,
And airs by myrtles odoured blow
The apple blossom on the wave!

V

Thrice blest the strain that, when the May
Allures the young leaf from the bud
When robins, thrushlike, shake the spray
And deepening purples tinge the flood
Kindles new worlds of love and truth,
This world's lost Eden, still new-born,
In breast of Irish maid or youth
Reading beneath the Irish thorn:

VI

That wins from over-heated strife
Blinded ambition's tool; that o'er
The fields of unsabbatic life
The church-bells of the past can pour,
Around the old oak lightning-scarred
Can raise the untainted woods that rang
When, throned 'mid listening kerns, the bard
Of Oisin and of Patrick sang.
356

VII

Saturnian years return! Ere long
Peace, justice-built, the Isle shall cheer:
Even now old sounds of ancient wrong
At distance roll, but come not near:
Past is the iron age—the storms
That lashed the worn cliff, shock on shock;
The bird in tempest cradled warms
At last her wings upon the rock.

VIII

How many a bard may lurk even now,
Ireland, among thy noble poor!
To Truth their genius let them vow,
Scorn the bad Syren's tinsel lure;
Faithful to illustrate God's word
On Nature writ; or re-revealing,
Through Nature, Christian lore transferred
From faith to sight by songs heart-healing.

IX

Fair land! the skill was thine of old
Upon the illumined scroll to trace
In heavenly blazon blue or gold
The martyr's palm the angel's face;
One day on every Muse's page
Be thine a saintly light to fling,
And bathe the world's declining age
Once more in its baptismal spring!

X

Man sows: a Hand Divine must reap:
The toil wins most that wins not praise:
357

Stones buried in oblivion's deep
May help the destined pile to raise,
Foundations fix for pier or arch;—
Above that spirit-bridge's span
To Faith's inviolate home may march,
In God's good time, enfranchised man.
 

Foynes Island.

III. INDUSTRY.

I

Free children of a land set free
A land late bound in fetters
Demand ye why your critic guest
Scoffs oft in you his betters?
Nor race alone nor creed to him
Is stumbling-block, or scandal:
Your rags offend! he loathes in you
Light purse and slipshod sandal.

II

His Virtue builds on Self-Respect:
Upon that clay foundation
Nor rock nor sand his trophies stand,
The unit, and the nation:
Sad martyr of a finite Hope,
Nor seeks he, nor attains he
The all-heavenly prize. He toils for Earth;
But what he seeks that gains he.
358

III

Grasp ye, with ampler aim, that good
His tragic creed o'erprizes:
With loftier Mind revere in him
The Will that energizes
The strong right hand, the lion heart
The industrial truth and valour:
When comes reverse he too can die,
But not in dirt and squalor.

IV

Upon your brows the sunrise breaks:
Then scorn the dirgeful ditty!
Never, be sure, the heart was strong
That dallied with self-pity.
Your Fathers' part was this—to bear—
That plague they bore God stayeth:
Be yours to act! To manhood born
Be men! ‘Who worketh, prayeth.’

V

Son of the sorrowing Isle, her eyes
Arraign thee for unkindness!
Her shipless seas, her stagnant moors
Accuse thy sloth or blindness:
Set free her greatness; sing to her
New harvests waving round thee,
‘Thy son with golden robe hath girt
With golden crown hath crowned thee!’

VI

Young maid that bend'st above thy wheel
So pure, so meek, so simple,
359

The wool out-drawing as the smile
Developes from the dimple
Smile on! thou cloth'st thy country's feet
Those feet long bare and bleeding!
Smile on! thou send'st her Faith abroad
With seemlier swiftness speeding!

VII

Advance, victorious Years! we land
On solid shores and stable:
Recede, dim seas, and painted cloud
Of legend and of fable!
The Heroic Age returns. Of old
Men fought with spears and arrows:
The sea-bank is the shield to-day:
The true knight drains and harrows!

IV. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

1851.

I

The Land, how lies she cold and dead
When on her brow long since
Freedom its virtuous radiance shed
And drove the darkness thence?
The child at her its stone may fling;
The dragon-fly her cheek may sting—
‘Ho! murdered was she, or self-slain
This bulk with blackness in the brain?’
360

II

'Tis past! the Realm has learned its want:
The Nation wills its work:
Her eastern skies with lustre pant
Vacant till now and murk:
She vows with heavenly Faith to join
The manly mind, the fixed design
The mastering knowledge; public heart;
The nature crowned not quenched by art.

III

'Twas in a dolorous hour, 'twas then
When Famine plagued our coast,
And Penal Law, let loose again,
Trod feebly like a ghost
The land he once had stamped in blood
'Twas then her need we understood:
'Twas then her Genius from a cloud
Looked forth and cried to us aloud!

IV

The People heard; and, far and wide,
Like some long clarion blast
By town, and plain, and mountain side
The inspiring Mandate passed:
His children's crust the peasant shared
With him that brought the news, and bared
A hearth already blank to aid
That great emprize so long delayed.

V

In Glendalough's green vale, and where
The skylark shrills o'er Lee
361

Once more her domes shall Wisdom rear
And house the brave and free;
From Cashel's rock, th' old Minster fane
Shall laugh in light o'er Thomond's plain;
Grey Arran pierce the sea-fog's gloom;
Kildare her vestal lamp relume.

VI

Where Shannon sweeps by lost Athlone
To Limerick's Castle walls
New college choirs the river's moan
Shall tune at intervals;
By kingly Clonmacnoise and Cong
Fresh notes shall burst of olden song
And by that wave-washed northern shore
Whereon they toiled—those ‘Masters Four.’

VII

They toiled and toiled till sank the night:
They toiled till aching morn
Through mist of breakers rose with light
Uncertain and forlorn:
Their country's Present overcast,
They vowed thus much should live—her Past!
A beam o'er graves heroic shed
And haunt with dreams the Oppressor's bed.

VIII

Lo! where we stand one day shall spread
Cloisters like branching wood:
On the great Founder's sculptured head
Our Irish sunshine brood!
362

I see the fountains gem the grass;
Through murmuring courts the red gown pass;
Religion's pageant and the vaunt
Of Learning mailed and militant.

IX

I see, entombed in marble state,
Roderick—O'More—Red Hugh;
The two crowned Mourners —wise too late—
Their tardy wisdom rue:
I see the Martyrs of old time;
The warriors hymned in Irish rhyme,
And Burke and Grattan, just in deed
Though nurslings of an alien creed.

X

The vision deepens: tower-cast shades
With sunset longer grow:—
High ranged round airy colonnades
Fronting that western glow,
Lean out stone Patrons, veiled all day
But vast at eve against the grey
Like those great Hopes that o'er us shine
Distinctest in our life's decline.

XI

'Tis night: the dusk arcades between
Glimmers, O Derg, thy Lake!
The May moon o'er it trails serene
Her silver-woven wake:
363

What songs are those? Each boat has crossed
Half-way that radiance—and is lost
Returning from each ivied pile
That hallows Iniscaltra's Isle.

XII

The moon is set, and all is dark
Yet still those oars keep time:
The great clock shakes the courts, and hark,
That many-steepled chime!
From college on to college roll
The peals o'er creek and woody knoll!—
My Country, will it! Fancy's store
Is rich: yet Faith can grant thee more!
 

The Ecclesiastical Titles Act, 1851.

Dr. Newman.

Charles I. and James II.

V. TO IRELAND—AGAINST FALSE FREEDOM.

I.

The Nations have their parts assign'd:
The deaf one watches for the blind:
The blind for him that hears not hears:
Harmonious as the heavenly spheres
Despite their outward fret and jar
Their mutual ministrations are.
Some shine on history's earlier page;
Some prop the world's declining age:
One, one reserves her buried bloom
To flower perchance on Winter's tomb.
364

II.

Greece, weak of Will but strong in Thought,
To Rome her arts and science brought:
Rome, strong yet barbarous, gain'd from her
A staff, but, like Saint Christopher
Knew not for whom his strength to use
What yoke to bear, what master choose.
His neck the giant bent!—thereon
The Babe of Bethlehem sat! Anon
That staff his prop, that sacred freight
His guide, he waded through the strait
And enter'd at a new world's gate.

III.

On that new stage were played once more
The parts in Greece rehearsed before:
Round fame's Olympic stadium vast
The new-born, emulous Nations raced;
Now Spain, now France the headship won
Unrisen the Russian Macedon:
But naught, O Ireland, like to thee
Hath been! A Sphinx-like mystery
At the world's feast thou sat'st death-pale;
And blood-stains tinged thy sable veil.

IV.

Apostle, first, of worlds unseen!
For ages, then, deject and mean:—
Be sure, sad land, a concord lay
Between thy darkness and thy day!
Thy hand, had temporal gifts been thine,
Had lost perchance the things divine.
365

Truth's witness sole! The insurgent North
Gave way when falsehood's flood went forth;
On the scarr'd coasts deform'd and cleft
Thou, like the Church's Rock, wert left!

V.

That Tudor tyranny which stood
'Mid wrecks of Faith, was quench'd in blood
When Charles, its child and victim, lay
The Rebel-Prophet's bleeding prey.
Once more the destined wheel goes round!
Heads royal long are half discrown'd:
Ancestral rights decline and die:—
Thus Despotism and Anarchy
Alternate each the other chase
Twin Bacchantes wreathed around one vase.

VI.

The future sleeps in night: but thou
O Island of the branded brow
Her flatteries scorn who rear'd by Seine
Fraternity's ensanguined reign
And for a sceptre twice abhorr'd
Twice welcomed the Cesarian sword!
Thy past, thy hopes, are thine alone!
Though crush'd around thee and o'erthrown,
The majesty of civil might
The hierarchy of social right
Firm state in thee for ever hold!
Religion was their life and mould.

VII.

The vulgar, dog-like eye can see
Only the ignobler traits in thee;
366

Quaint follies of a fleeting time;
Dark reliques of the Oppressor's crime.
The Seer—what sees he? What the West
Has ne'er except in thee possess'd;
The childlike Faith, the Will like fate,
And that Theistic Instinct great
New worlds that summons from the abyss
‘The balance to redress of this.’

VIII.

Wait thou the end; and spurn the while
False Freedom's meretricious smile!
Stoop not thy front to anticipate
A triumph certain! Watch and wait!
The schismatic, by birth akin
To Socialist and Jacobin,
Will claim, when shift the scales of power
His natural place. Be thine that hour
With good his evil to requite;
To save him in his own despite;
And backward scare the brood of night!

SONNET.

SARSFIELD AND CLARE.

Silent they slumber in the unwholesome shade:
And why lament them? Virtue too can die:
Old wisdom labours in extremity;
And greatness stands aghast, and cries for aid
Full often: aye, and honour grows dismayed;
And all those eagle hopes so pure and high
367

Which soar aloft in youth's unclouded sky
Drop dustward, self-subverted, self-betrayed.
Call it not joy to walk the immortal floor
Of this exulting earth, nor peace to lie
Where the thronged marbles awe the passer by:
True rest is this; the task, the mission o'er,
To bide God's time and man's neglect to bear—
Hail, loyal Sarsfield! Hail, high-hearted Clare!

TO CHARLES COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT,

WITH A COPY OF ‘INISFAIL.’

Your spirit walks in halls of light:
On earth you breathe its sunnier climes:
How can an Irish muse invite
Your fancy thus to sorrowing rhymes?
But you have fought the Church's fight!
My Country's Cause and hers are one:
And every Cause that rests on Right
Invokes Religion's bravest son.
Scotland reveres her great Montrose,
Scotland bewails her brave Dundee!
With Alfred's memory England glows:—
What lethal hemlock freezes thee
My country, that thy trophies rise
To noteless men, or men ill-famed,
While they thy manlier destinies
Who shaped, so long remain unnamed?
368

The Dutchman strides his steed new-gilt
In thy chief city's stateliest way;
The Kings thy monarchy who built
Or died to save it, where are they?
Clontarf! That King who smote the Dane
That King who raised a realm laid low—
On thee what hath he? Benburb's plain
No record bears of Owen Roe!
Forgotten now as Nial and Conn
Are those twin stars of Yellow-Ford
Who freed Tyrconnell and Tyrone
Their country's altars who restored.
Ireland awake! For thine own weal
Yield thy great Dead their honours late:
Those only understand who feel
How self-disfranchised are the ingrate!

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!’
369

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!
 

The refusal of Parliamentary Reform, and of Catholic Emancipation, rendered the Irish Constitution of 1782 a nullity.

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!
370

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!
1851.

SHEPHERD SONG.

From spinning at the threshold
From knitting at the stile
The lover sang, draw nearer, girl,
Bring close to me that smile!
Let Morrise weed the garden
Let Nora milk the cow;
I hate to see thee bend and drop
The seed behind the plough.
371

Spring calls the wakening lily;
The lilac calls the bee;
The goldfinch calls his bright-eyed mate;
And Love and I call thee.
It is that wheel still droning
That will not let thee hear
Though laughs the gold-weed from the lake,
The blossom from the breer.
373

THESE SONNETS ARE DEDICATED TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON By AUBREY DE VERE IN MEMORY OF OLD ROMAN DAYS
375

I. JOAN OF ARC.

O royal-hearted peasant-maid of France
Whom that ‘still voice’ which those alone can hear
Who walk in innocence and void of fear
To war-fields called from rural toils or dance;
Whom God's great saints, revealed to thee in trance,
For knightly onset girt with shield and spear,
Thy task a Christian throne from dust to rear
And work a Christian realm's deliverance;
O thou that charioted by martyr-fires
Rod'st to thy God that task fulfilled, this day
A deeper need a saintlier aid requires;
Invaders worse possess thy France, their prey;
This hour suffice not crown restored, or chrism:
Her Foes within: thy prayers are exorcism.
1889.

II. THE PRINCE OF WALES' TRIBUTE OF PRAISE TO FATHER DAMIEN.

June 1889.
'Twas just! Fanatic strifes expire, self-slain:
Nature lives on, and Faith. In years gone by
‘The Mass,’ men clamoured, ‘is Idolatry;
The Priest’—true hearts this hour such cries disdain:
Men differ still, but kindly differ, fain
376

Like England's Prince to crown with eulogy
All those who live for God and man, who die
As Damien died—no barren death or vain.
Son of old Scottish kings in tartan clad
That chased the stag through woods of Calydon,
Were crowned at Scone, in Holyrood held sway,
Those kings, that martyr-priest in faith were one!
They heard thy words in Heaven. She most was glad
Thine ancestress who bled at Fotheringay.

III. ON THE LATE PILGRIMAGE TO PARAY LE MONIAL.

A.D. 1873.

I. THE BEATA.

She that amid the marbles and the gems
Richer than those that flatter king or queen
Couches, psalm-circled, 'neath yon tapers' sheen,
Despised the light of earthly diadems.
Cesarian pomps, by Tyber or by Thames,
For her no splendours held. Her vision keen,
Piercing earth's glories, found them all unclean
On every shore the sea's blue crescent hems.
Alone the Will of God to her was fair:
Her Universe reflected but His beam:
Yet man remains her client. Critic, spare
To brand that great life as a barren dream:
One gift she gave who claimed in gifts no part—
She drew man nearer to his Saviour's Heart.
377

II. SANCTITY.

Not for the music of miraculous Deeds
Which through God's House resound at intervals
Like marriage chimes gladdening far distant meads
Or torrents echoing from the mountain walls
Not for bright Visions sent from heavenly halls;
Not for that blest Devotion—thine—which breeds
Daily new helps for Time's advancing needs;
'Tis not for these that grateful man installs
Thy memory in his heart. The earth-shaking Word
The all-wondrous Act, whole realms to justice won—
But shadows are of that, the Unseen, the Unheard,
Which they whose Gods are Heroes hate and shun:
For that thou art we love thee; that which He
His Saints Who fashions, worked, and was, in thee.
 

The Devotion to the Sacred Heart.

IV. ST. CHRYSOSTOM'S RETURN FROM EXILE.

Sad is the music though the midnight seas
Flash in the torch-light brighter than by day—
378

Dirge for the dead. A hundred ships make way
Like pyres of Norland kings, before the breeze.
That night they pass the famed Symplegades;
At dawn they anchor in Byzantium's bay;
At noon, o'er streets flower-strewn with banners gay
A regal train advances. Who are these?
An Emperor kneels before a Pontiff's bier,
Suing the pardon of a Father's crime;
A penitent people high the coffin rear;
The ‘Apostles' Church,’ as in the ancient time,
Receives once more her exiled Chrysostom—
Fitlier this day he sleeps Saint Peter's guest at Rome.
 

Arcadius, Emperor of the East, banished St. Chrysostom. He died of his sufferings on his way to his place of exile, Pityus, on the eastern coast of the Euxine. Thirty years later Theodosius II., son of Arcadius, brought back the body of the Saint to Constantinople, and interred it, A.D. 438, in the Church of the Apostles. See Leaves from St. John Chrysostom, by Mary H. Allies, pp. 13—15.

V. THE DEATH OF POPE HILDEBRAND.

‘Justice I loved: the unrighteous way by me
Was hated; for that cause exile I die.’
Thus Hildebrand; his prelates wept hard by
Save one, his best and dearest. All night he
Had watched that Sufferer while Salerno's sea
Beat on the neighbouring coasts. With kindling eye
Fixed on the dying man he made reply
Risen from the ground yet bending still his knee:
‘Father, not so! All wrongs save one may rage
Around God's Church, strike down its earthly Head:
A prison may be his home, a rack his bed,—
Exile he can not be for God hath sworn
“The heathen I will make thy heritage
And thy possession earth's remotest bourn.”’
379

VI. THE FORMULARY OF POPE HORMISDAS.

January 18, 1889.
‘The Chalice Jesus raised, the Bread He brake,
Emperor, and ye his bishops of the East
Who share the Empire's, not the Church's feast,
At Peter's board demand not to partake
Until not less those Words which Jesus spake,
“Peter thou art: upon this Rock I build
My Church”—Creative Words in act fulfilled—
Ye take into your hearts for Jesus' sake.’
Thus wrote Hormisdas. Onward as a wind
That Spirit Divine Who o'er the waters moved
Wafted his legates saintly and approved:
Two thousand and five hundred bishops signed
The Pontiff's ‘Rule’ in Christ's own words confessed:
Died the revolt. That hour God's Church found rest.
 

See The Holy See and the Wanderings of the Nations, p. 167, by Thomas W. Allies, K.C.S.G.

Regula Fidei.

VII. THE SPANISH ARMADA AND THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS.

A Spanish fleet affront our English shores!
It must not be; it shall not! Sink or swim
Our Cause, our lamp of Hope burn bright or dim,
Long as o'er English cliffs the osprey soars,
380

Long as on English coasts the breaker roars,
No alien flag shall scale our blue sea-rim,
No smoke from Spanish gun our skies bedim,
No foot from Parma stain our household floors!
Fair sirs, we question not your true intent
To prop true Faith, and Queens in wedlock born:
But foreign aid, and arms, and arts we scorn:
To native hearts and hands we trust the event:
The Right is ours; with God the arbitrament:
At worst, beyond His night remains His morn!

VIII. THE ISLAND OF IONA.

Not for the tombs of old Norwegian Kings
Or Scottish, iron-mailed, and crowned at Scone:
Not for those ‘Island-Lords’ the Minstrel sings
As sang his sires in centuries past and flown;
Not for yon grassy terrace breeze-o'erblown,
Yon crags to which the storm-wrecked shepherd clings
Eying far lights on isle and mountain thrown
As though from onward-sailing Angels' wings;—
Iona! 'Tis not these that yearly draw
Thy Pilgrims hither o'er the Northern sea
And hold them there spell-bound in loving awe:
That spell, Columba, is the thought of thee!
They gaze; they muse; ‘these shores that Exile trod—
That Exile's sons gave England to her God!’
 

Columba, though a priest, had joined in an Irish battle. The penance imposed on him was perpetual exile from Ireland. He made Iona his abode till death, preaching on the adjacent shores. Montalembert affirms that later his Irish monks converted nearly three-quarters of Anglo-Saxon England.

The ‘Lords of the Isles.’

381

IX. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

Strong Land, by Wallace trod and Bruce: brave Land
That broke great Edward's ranks at Bannockburn:
Fair Land whose breast, upheaved in Faith's bright morn
Breathed forth, like sighs of joy, these fanes that stand
Even now on Stirling's rock, Iona's strand;
How long shall Justice point with sorrowing scorn
At that sole act which on thy brow time-worn
So long unblemished, stamped so dark a brand?
A Queen there was, struck down in beauty's prime,
Captive till death, religious, fearless, true:
The calumny that dogged her was a crime
Of edge more trenchant than the axe that slew.
False nobles wrecked her, and a Rival's hate—
Repent that wrong thy tears alone can expiate!
 

See Mr. Hosack's unanswered vindication of Mary.

X. A PORTRAIT OF ANNE BOLEYN.

Ah, silver-tissued phantom lithe as hind
Skimming dark glades! Ah, white as moon that dips
In storm-cloud black its crescent's glimmering tips!
Ah, blithesome foot, swifter than wave or wind!
382

Were those the mocking eyes whose fiat signed
Honour's death-warrant? Those the laughing lips
That o'er a realm's Religion breathed eclipse;
A King, once kingly, changed to false and blind?
Salomè new! was this the babe that played
With her own shadow 'mid the founts and flowers?
Death-sentenced Queen! was this the girl that prayed
Before our Lady's shrine, unmoved for hours?
I judge not her. The night before her death
She prayed her childhood's prayers—with tranquil breath.

XI. ON THE CONSECRATION OF ST. PATRICK'S NEW CATHEDRAL AT ARMAGH.

August 24, 1873.
This day the crime of ages stands reversed:
This day, re-risen, in saintlier sovereignty
Saint Patrick's towers invoke their native sky,
His second Temple lordlier than his first:
Orient once more, a vanished Hope hath burst
From night's black realm: in Stygian pageantry
The stormy wrecks of Penal years go by
Like ghosts remanded to their realms accurst.
Ho, Watcher on the summits! cry aloud,
How speeds the dawn? What promise gilds the East?
A Voice responds—thy voice, great Patriarch-Priest,
‘I see a Race baptized as in the cloud:
I see a Nation round an Altar bowed:
I see God's People share His Marriage Feast.’
383

XII. ON THE CONSECRATION OF IRELAND TO THE SACRED HEART.

Passion Sunday 1873.
Lift up Thy gates, triumphant Heart Eterne
Heart of the God-man! Heart that, throned on high,
Larger than that starred palace of the sky
In glory reignest, and in love dost burn!
To Thee this day a People's heart doth yearn;
To Thee, all eagle-winged, yet tremblingly
Makes way; in Thee would live; for Thee would die,
Zealous for Thee terrestrial crowns to spurn.
‘Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates,’
And give a nation leave to enter in!
The centuries ended of her adverse fates
This day with God she hides her from the sin
Of prosperous realms that trample gifts divine—
Heart of the God-man, make Thy captive Thine!

ON THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION STONE OF THE NEW CHURCH AT MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.

XIII. THE PAST.

October 10, 1875.
Not vain the faith and patience of the Saints!
Not vain, sad Isle, thy many-centuried woes!
384

Thy day was tempest-cradled; but its close
Is splendour; and the shattered forest's plaints
In music die. No dull repining taints
That ether pure of memory's realm, which far
Recedes, like some long tract left waste by war,
Some tract which eve with peaceful purple paints.
Long time thy priests, my country, were thy poor:
The Cross their book they raised the Sacrifice
In ruined chancel, and on rainy moor:
Behold, the great reward is come! Arise,
Fane long desired! Beneath thy roofs of gold
Throne the new rites—the creed and worship old!

XIV. THE FOUNDATION STONE.

Descend, strong Stone, into my country's breast:
Child of the sea-beat cliff, or skiey height,
Descend, well-pleased, into the eternal night;
Amid the eternal silence make thy rest!
Descend in hope, thou high, prophetic Guest,
For God a covenant upon thee doth write:
On thee His pledge is graved in words of might
Plain as those mandates by His hand impressed,
While Sinai's peaks made answer, thunder-riven,
On the twinned Tablets of the Hebrew Law.
This day the future with the past is wed;
The undying promise with the greatness dead;
Ireland this day her ancient pact with Heaven
Renews in godly triumph, loving awe.
385

XV. THE MAYNOOTH CENTENARY;

OR, IRELAND'S VOCATION.

I heard a voice and turned me. From above
A heavenly City crowned with minsters fair
And college courts high-towered, through glittering air
Drew to our planet softly as a dove;
Nearer that vision moved or seemed to move:
At last it reached our shores; and I was 'ware
That all its walls were graved with text and prayer
Truth's legend old, God's book of endless Love.
Anon from all its gates there issued forth
Prophet-processions singing this: ‘This day
Our task again reaches the ends of Earth!
Ireland gave mandate, and her sons obey,
Ireland, the Apostolic Land. Four-fold
Faith's victories new shall pass her victories old!’
1895.

XVI. THE NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH NEAR WINDERMERE.

1885.

I

Deep-bosomed vales of England's queenliest land,
And thou her amplest as her loveliest lake,
Be just, be grateful, and our joy partake!
Lo where a daughter of that Faith once banned
386

Takes 'mid your bosky slopes, once more her stand!
Through yonder cloud I see a promise break;
‘The land that slept, that land at last shall wake
And hail yon Cross there raised at God's command,’
From Langdale's pikes to Scawfell's loneliest wold
Rejoice fair hills whose yew-woods teemed of old
The bows at Crecy feared and Ascalon;
Rejoice thou most, grey Furness, early and late
Warding our British Highlands' southern gate:
Say to thy graves; ‘Rejoice! the night is gone!’

II

Wordsworth, and Southey, and that other Name
Fitly with these conjoined, whose Orphic lays
Though few, gave help to tune discordant days,
Whose insight puts our modern seers to shame,
When to this Carmel of the North ye came
Then young, no prophet race survived to raise
Truth's standard old; perforce in Error's maze
Ye walked, though pure your feet and high your aim.
Not less Truth's whisper, from Iona's Isle
First breathed, still faintly clung to cliff and fell
Like night-dews trembling round some ruined pile!
That whisper to a trumpet's blast shall swell,
And ye, great Souls with Fisher and with More
Exulting hear it from the eternal shore.

III

Great men grow rarer daily; great were these:
Greater those tonsured Saints discalced, who trod,
Now living Powers, not plaintive Memories,
This God-loved land, and rest this day with God:
387

Herbert who paced blue Derwent's flower-girt flood;
Cuthbert, his friend, whose sea-girt diocese
From Lindisfarne to westward-throned St. Bees
Revered one crosier staff and prophet-rod;
Old Bede, and countless more in Faith's glad morn
Who roamed Northumbria's bound, and glorified
Bernicia and Deira and Strathclyde:
Behold! to them this day a child is born!
This day to God they lift their hands and say,
‘Bless this new Altar: bless Thy Land for aye.’
 

Coleridge.

XVII. WALNA CRAG, AND ‘THE LADY'S RAKE,’ DERWENTWATER.

1895.
Not Skiddaw, not Blencathara's ‘skiey height,’
Not Derwent Isle, Lodare, not Borrodale,
So charmed in youth, so cheer in age my sight
As thou, O Walna Crag, and that sad tale
Of her who, rebel-roused at dead of night,
Caught up her Babe new-born; still weak and frail
Clasping that Babe found strength yon cliff to scale
While fought far off her Lord to attest a right
By sophists mocked. King James' fall was just:
He sinned; but blameless was King James' son;
His claim was owned by James' ill-crowned daughter:
Who charged with crime that Royal Youth? Not one!
Who died to vindicate that claim august?
That peerless Lady's Consort—Derwentwater.
388

XVIII. ULSWATER.

September 5, 1895.
Pensive Ulswater, thanks! Thy face once more
I see. Hail, English Lakeland's duskiest Child,
Duskiest, for, closeliest here around thee piled
Her mountains fling their shades from shore to shore.
Again thine Aira Force's ‘gentle roar’
I hear breeze-borne o'er heathery waste and wild;
Again I see, delightedly beguiled,
Those daffodils thy Wordsworth sang of yore.
The waves beside them ‘they out-did in glee’
That day. This hour perchance from yonder sky
Their Poet sees them—she beside him, she
Who gazed with him through tears on Yarrow's bowers—
Ah surely nothing bright and fair once ours,
If wholly pure, can ever wholly die!
 

See Wordsworth's lines, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’ etc.

Wordsworth's sister.

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