Like proud chargers from the deep,
Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep
All their wrath to spray,
So their glinting waves of steel
Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel
Till their serried columns reel,
Scattered in dismay.
Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be
Still unconquered, proud, and free;
Strike, and fear not,--victory
Waits on every blow;
Strike, that we may never roam
Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;
Strike together, and strike home,
Vengeance on the foe!
THE FENIAN’S DREAM.
CHRISTMAS, 1867.
Through London’s dull and murky air
The merry Christmas bells
Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,
Their sonorous throbs and swells.
To the half-slumbering town they spoke
Of peace and God’s good-will,
And seemed to chase with pealing stroke
The fiends of hate and ill;
But, ah, how cruelly they broke
Around dark Pentonville!
There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,
Half timid, forced their way,
And fell in slender, silvery streams,
Down where the convict lay.
They glanced a moment round the place,
Cold, comfortless, and bare,
Then, in a pitying embrace,
Like angel spirits there,
Caressed the careworn, pallid face,
So wan, and yet so fair.
They seemed to whisper softly while
Around his head they strayed,
For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,
Half joy, half anguish, played;
As if the tender moonbeams sought
Bright tales of hope to tell,
And the day memories, bitter, wrought
Such fancies to dispel;
And so his two dream guardians fought
Within his lonely cell.
His dream was of the loved old land
He never could forget--
The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,
Had not subdued it yet;
The land of legend and of lay,
Of mountain, stream, and lake,
Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,
Of forest, glen, and brake,
Where highland sprite and lowland fay
A home forever make.
The land whose children toil and bleed,
And drudge and starve in vain,
For where the peasant sows the seed,
A stranger reaps the grain.
The Isle of Saints--where knaves and spies
Flourish and thrive apace;
Where fortune must be wooed by lies,
Dishonor, and disgrace;
The true man from such saintdom flies,
And cattle take his place.
Land of the green, and of the gray!
For workhouse, tomb, and jail
Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,
And answer, Innisfail,
Tell us which tint thou seest most,
The old one or the new?
The green of which our poets boast,
Or the more sombre hue?
Few wear the green: a countless host
Have donned the gray for you.
Island of verdure, glorious land!
So rich in fertile plains,
Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,
Yet famine ever reigns;
Where through the mellow ripening corn
The balmiest zephyrs sigh,
Where brighter seems each glowing morn,
More radiant each sky;
Where ’tis misfortune to be born,
And happiness to die.
Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled
To think he played once more,
A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,
Beside the cabin door--
The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,
Upon his mother’s knee,
He first had learned to lisp a prayer
For Ireland’s liberty,
And ever pregnant seemed the air
With joyous melody.
His fancy changed: the youthful face
In sternness now was set,
His woes had left no coward trace
Upon his spirit yet;
His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,
His cheeks were all aglow;
Expanded seemed the hollow chest,
His brows contract, as though
Disturbed and broken was his rest
By some nocturnal foe.
He dreamt that in his native land,
Away from this bleak jail,
He stood within a meadow grand,
A shamrock-spangled vale.
Above the scene the sun-rays bright
In glittering grandeur beamed,
Around him in their golden light
Ten thousand bayonets beamed,
And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!
Green Erin’s banner streamed.
From town and village, hill and glen,
With clamorous fife and drum,
From mountain brake and lowland fen
The mustering legions come;
The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,
Has brought his dinted blade;
While quickly from the neighboring town
Flock in the sons of trade;
The farmer flings his good spade down,
And joins the dense brigade.
The fiery Northmen, in whose veins
Still flows the blood of those
Who on a hundred battle-plains
Have conquered Erin’s foes--
The brave descendants of O’Neill,
A stern and fearless band,
A living wall of sparkling steel
Beneath the old flag stand,
And many a Saxon foe shall feel
Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.
With Ulster’s columns, side by side,
Are Munster’s squadrons massed,
Like tigers into line they glide,
So noiselessly and fast;
Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green
They bear into the fray,
Through England’s host their sabres keen
Shall carve a corse-strewn way,
And Limerick and Skibbereen
Be well avenged to-day.
Proud Leinster, all your chivalry
To arms electric spring;
High ’mid the battle’s revelry
Your stirring shout shall ring;
And many a foe this day shall rue
Your fierce, impetuous might;
The scenes that gallant Wexford knew
Shall be reversed ere night;
The epitaph to Emmet due
Your gleaming swords shall write.
O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives
Within your ranks this hour;
Before the strength your hatred gives
Well may the despot cower.
Think of your long, black night of tears,
And say, can you forget
The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers--
That huge, uncancelled debt,
The wrongs of thrice two hundred years
That scourge your province yet?
Hark to that distant rumbling sound!
See, yonder come the foe;
Now be our arms with victory crowned,
The foreign scum laid low.
The stillness and the calm are o’er,
And many a sulphurous cloud,
Betinged with flame and dripping gore,
Shall form a battle-shroud
For those whose tongues may swell no more
The nation’s slogan loud.
Like hostile torrents armies clash,
And steel now crosses steel,
The lurid flames incessant flash,
And volleyed thunders peal;
But backward reel the alien ranks,
With one exultant cry,
Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,
Not vainly will ye die;
Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,
The craven red-coats fly!
’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;
And though yon darling flag
May float above our castle towers
A torn and tattered rag,
’Tis still our own; and every fold
Preserved us from the strife,
Each shred around that flag-staff rolled
Unpierced by ball or knife,
Is worth a mine of virgin gold--
Aye, worth a hero’s life.
From slimy cell and dungeon damp
Bring forth our prisoned men;
Gather, ye braves, from every camp,
To cheer them home again.
What though to-day they did not bleed
To share our victory,
We reap the harvest of their seed,
So victors still they be;
From faction they our people freed,
And now our land is free.
* * * * *
Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake
The city with your strain;
Your loudest music cannot break
The felon’s rest again.
His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,
Nor left a single ray,
For all that but this moment shone
Retreat before the day;
But that last, loving, pitying one
Has borne his soul away.
“Died in his cell”--and nothing more;
’Twas all his comrades heard;
But of the dream he had before
He died,--oh, not a word!
They found him on the coarse straw bed,
A smile upon his face,
And, “Number 28 found dead,”
Was whispered round the place;
And the jail doctor shook his head
And wondered at the case!
THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]
An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,
’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,
There is not much fun in recovering rent
Where the Land League has hold of the people;
But upheaval of earth
Is good reason for mirth,
’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,
Compared to a seat
Where the Commoners meet
When Mulligan rises to order.
A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,
Catarrhic attacks are not charming,
There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain
That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.
Should close diagnosis
Reveal your probocis
To be of your weakness recorder,
You might foolishly curse;
But it’s very much worse
When Mulligan rises to order.
The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,
A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,
Are music compared to the agonized yell
Of rage and derision, his greeting;
You go home to your bed
With a pain in your head,
By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;
Your sleep is a blight,
Your comfort takes flight,
Your breathing is tight,
You scratch and you bite,
Or you wake with affright
As you dream through the night
That Mulligan rises to order!
ERIN MACHREE (1798).
The sun had gone down in a halo of glory,
And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray
On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,
The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.
Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,
And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,
We gathered together in sorrow and weeping
For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!
From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,
Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;
We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,
And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.
Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us
We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,
While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus
That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!
But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,
Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;
When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,
’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!
Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,
The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,
Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying
The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!
Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow
With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;
Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow--
That morning must dawn on our island at last.
Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;
Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them
To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them
To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!
THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.
When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years
ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret
conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he
decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and
Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly
attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently
to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the
combined detective forces.
Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff
of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua
Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to
Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his
impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is
fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul
aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely
jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount
Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,
cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.
She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional
nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all
the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a
renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his
constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,
in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in
petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix
surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his
coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces.
Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the
postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was
quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to
witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the
other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a
miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging
promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase
to that winning post, the door.
Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of
night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst
out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be
snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the
amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would
remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of
slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of
feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.
Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra
professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,
but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or
other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of
civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed
on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any
postal manual.
Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not
phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad
fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our
rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.
London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and
cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to
Love’s young dream in the entire A division.
He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids
either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and
there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a
maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted
brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every
five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a
week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a
school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or
so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular
as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed
around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of
sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If
accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and
forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.
In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen
cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four
washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.
His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent
intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley
Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of
promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare
not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet
day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big
brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted
to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular
London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.
No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all
these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he
brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been
kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not
been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful
affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,
Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2
guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”
The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer
in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the
elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the
confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their
secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the
pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.
By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It
was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,
but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see
her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill
under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest
observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”
he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold
forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,
mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight
effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,
water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no
response.
“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens
reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up
alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a
disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and
electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a
stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred
spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,
of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare
the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,
and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with
me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or
Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest
Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or
whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”
And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the
bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of
which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of
plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool
shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman
was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at
robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in
the shape of tears.
The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted
Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the
most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t
tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish
colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a
charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought
it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’
figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.
This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which
shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit
those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily
Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping
vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to
remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins
himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of
his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at
least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric
light.
BALFOUR’S WISH.
When members have taken their usual places,
And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,
The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,
Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;
And as, one by one, question follows on question,
Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,
In agony mental that spoils his digestion,
But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”
“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,
“How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”
“Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,
“The average size of potatoes in Clare?”
A third seeks a legal opinion, without
Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,
And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,
While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.
Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,
Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,
What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?
Does he ever indulge in the national car?
Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?
Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?
And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,
“Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”
OUR CAUSE.
Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,
Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,
Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,
Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,
Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,
With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:
Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,
For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!
Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,
And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,
And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,
They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.
The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,
No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,
But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,
The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.
It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;
It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;
O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more
Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.
Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,
And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;
But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,
And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.
What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,
That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,
That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,
Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?
’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,
No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;
Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,
And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!
SERVED HIM RIGHT.
[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the
Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat
right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor
creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”--_London
Graphic._]
I have no tears for brother Pat,
Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,
On the Egyptian desert, that
He might assist in England’s glory.
The foes he fought were not his own,
Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;
Then why should I his fate bemoan?
O brother, faithless and degraded!
He saw how Saxon laws at home
Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,
Why should he cross the ocean’s foam
To place that hated yoke on others?
The Arabs slew him in a fight
For all by brave and free men cherished--
Ay, for the cause of truth and right,
For which his kith and kin had perished.
No Arab chief in Ninety-eight
Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;
They lent no spears to swell the hate
Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.
But those who wrapt our homes in flame
And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle--
It was for them--oh, burning shame!
My brother gave his life in battle.