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Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

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218<br />

(Oft shed by fratricidal hand),<br />

With the best blood of all the land.<br />

And now, at last, the fight seemed o'er,<br />

The sound of battle pealed no more;<br />

Abject the prostrate people lay,<br />

Nor dared to hope a better day;<br />

An icy chill, a fatal frost,<br />

Left them with all but honour lost,<br />

Left them with only trust in God,<br />

The lands were gone their fathers owned;<br />

Poor pariahs on their native sod.<br />

Their faith was banned, their prophets stoned;<br />

Their temples crowning every height,<br />

Now echoed with an alien rite,<br />

Or silent lay each mouldering pile,<br />

With shattered cross and ruined aisle.<br />

Letters denied, forbade to pray,<br />

And white-winged commerce scared away:<br />

Ah, what can rouse the dormant life<br />

That still survives the stormier strife?<br />

What potent charm can once again<br />

Relift the cross, rebuild the fane?<br />

Free learning from felonious chains,<br />

And give to youth immortal gains?<br />

What signal mercy from on high?--<br />

Hush! hark! I hear an infant's cry,<br />

The answer of a new-born child,<br />

From Iveragh's far mountain wild.<br />

Yes, 'tis the cry of a child, feeble and faint in the night,<br />

But soon to thunder in tones that will rouse both tyrants and slaves.<br />

Yes, 'tis the sob of a stream just awake in its source on the height,<br />

But soon to spread as a sea, and rush with the roaring of waves.<br />

Yes, 'tis the cry of a child affection hastens to still,<br />

But what shall silence ere long the victor voice of the man?<br />

Easy it is for a branch to bar the flow of the rill,<br />

But all the forest would fail where raging the torrent once ran.<br />

And soon the torrent will run, and the pent-up waters o'erflow,<br />

For the child has risen to a man, and a shout replaces the cry;

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