Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis
Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis
Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
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;