Ireland for the Irish Rhymes and Reasons Against Landlordism with a Preface on Fenianism and Republicanism. By W. J. Linton, Formerly of the Irish "Nation" |
 |
PATRIOTS |
 | Ireland for the Irish |  |
67
PATRIOTS
Where, my Country! are thy zealots?
Where thy freemen? Echo saith:
Yonder crowds of famish'd helots
Have no country, have no faith.
What to them the deathless story,
Page historic, scroll of fame?
What have they to do with glory?
Can they lower sink than shame?
Where thy freemen? Echo saith:
Yonder crowds of famish'd helots
Have no country, have no faith.
What to them the deathless story,
Page historic, scroll of fame?
What have they to do with glory?
Can they lower sink than shame?
Give the serf a freeman's station,
Root him firmly in the soil,—
He'll not then desert his nation,
Chary of his blood or toil.
Swinehood, with or wanting victual,
Patriot duty,—what care they?
When your country's but a spital,
Who but Wretchedness will stay?
Root him firmly in the soil,—
He'll not then desert his nation,
Chary of his blood or toil.
Swinehood, with or wanting victual,
Patriot duty,—what care they?
When your country's but a spital,
Who but Wretchedness will stay?
Where, my Country! are thy zealots?
Fellow-patriots! answer me:
We were something worse than helots
If we dared not to be free.
Then, though flame from Hell enwreathed us,
We'd not flinch, the while we stood
On the land our sires bequeath'd us,
To quench peril, even in blood.
Fellow-patriots! answer me:
We were something worse than helots
If we dared not to be free.
Then, though flame from Hell enwreathed us,
We'd not flinch, the while we stood
On the land our sires bequeath'd us,
To quench peril, even in blood.
| Ireland for the Irish | |