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diff --git a/38898.txt b/38898.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e10eed7..0000000 --- a/38898.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1485 +0,0 @@ - POEMS AND PARODIES - - - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - - - -Title: Poems and Parodies -Author: T. M. Kettle -Release Date: December 06, 2012 [EBook #38898] -Language: English -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND PARODIES *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines. - - - - -[Illustration: Cover] - - - - -[Illustration: T. M. Kettle] - - - - - POEMS & PARODIES - - - BY - T. M. KETTLE - - - - DUBLIN - THE TALBOT PRESS - 1916 - - - - - Printed by - The Educational Company of Ireland - at - THE TALBOT PRESS - 89 Talbot St., Dublin - - - - - TOM KETTLE - - 1880-1916 - - -Two simple words, charged now for some of us with sad and infinite -memories. It is not the death of the Professor, nor of the soldier, nor -of the politician--nor even of the poet or the essayist--that causes the -heart-ache that we feel. It is the loss of that rare, charming, -wondrous personality summed up in those two simple words, TOM KETTLE. - -A genial cynic, a pleasant pessimist, an earnest trifler, he was made up -of contradictions. A fellow of infinite jest--and infinite sadness. -His prototypes were Hamlet or the Melancholy Jacques. Among the -delightful essays he has left us in that charming little book, _The -Day's Burden_, is one entitled "A new way of misunderstanding _Hamlet_." -He was himself a veritable Hamlet in this twentieth century Ireland. -One may ask, did he quite understand himself? Master of paradox, -enunciator of enigma, he was a paradox and an enigma in, and to, -himself. Shall we seek now to pluck out the heart of his mystery? The -lines are hackneyed beyond hope, but in this instance they apply in -truth. - -The personality of Kettle had in it something subtle; something -essential yet elusive; something not to be defined. He was a great -talker in the Johnsonian sense. As a story-teller, it was not so much -the point of his tale that counted as his telling of it. The -divagations from the text in which he loved to indulge were the delight -of his auditors. With truth it may be said that his rich humour, his -brilliant, mordant wit, caused his listeners to hang upon his words. -And his outlook was so wide, his soul so big, his mind so broad, and a -deep love of humanity so permeated him that his talk, or one might more -fittingly say, his discourse, was educating and uplifting. But he was a -man of moods, descending from heights of Homeric humour to the depths of -a divine despair. Those privileged to hear him thus expounding will -cherish the memory while they live. We, too, as it were, have "seen -Shelley plain." He charmed, he fascinated. This, in truth, describes -him for his spell wrought even on those who actually disliked him. - -In the numerous notices printed of him since he died much has been -written of the promise of his career. More appropriate it would be to -write of his performance. He crowded into thirty-six years of life far -more than most men achieve in twice that span. Now the orator is -silent, the brilliant wit has ceased to sparkle, the skilful pen will -ply no more. Tom Kettle knows at last the answer to the riddle that -baffled him, the Riddle of the Universe. - -Well may we mourn-- - - _For Lycidas is dead;_ - _Young Lycidas: dead ere his prime,_ - _And hath not left his peer._ - - WILLIAM DAWSON. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PERSONAL - -Dedication Sonnet: To my Wife -To my daughter Betty, the gift of God -On Leaving Ireland -Epigram - - - EARLY POEMS - -To Young Ireland -Sowing -Dreams and Duty -A Song of Vengeance - - - TRANSLATIONS - -1At Achensee, Tirol`_ -1The Monks`_ - - - MISCELLANEOUS - -The Lady of Life -When others see us as we see ourselves -Ennui -Ballad Autumnal -The Lost Ball - - - POLITICAL - -Parnell -The House of Lords: An Epitaph -Reason in Rhyme -Asquith in Dublin -Ulster -To Ireland - - - WAR POEMS - -Paddy -Sergeant Mike O'Leary -A Nation's Freedom -A Song of the Irish Armies - - - - -Permission to reprint several of the poems in this Volume has been -kindly granted by the proprietors of the _Daily Chronicle, Freeman's -Journal, Cork Examiner,_ Messrs. MAUNSEL & Co., Ltd.. and THE TALBOT -PRESS - - - - - PERSONAL - - - "Memorial I would have - ... a constant presence - with those that love me" - - - - DEDICATION SONNET - - - TO MY WIFE - - "Not the sea, only, wrecks the hopes of men, - Look deeper, there is shipwreck everywhere," - So mourned the exquisite Roman's rich despair, - Too high in death for that ignoble pen. - Nero, his wrecker, is amply wrecked since then, - And all that Rome's a whiff of charnel air; - But to subdue Petronius' mal-de-mer - Have we found drugs? I pray you, What? and When? - - Shipwreck, one grieves to say, retains its vogue: - Or let the keel win on in stouter fashion, - And look! your golden lie of Tir-na-n'Og - Is sunset and waste waters, chill and ashen-- - Faith lasts? Nay, since I knew your yielded eyes, - I am content with sight .... of Paradise. - - - - - TO MY DAUGHTER BETTY, - THE GIFT OF GOD - - (ELIZABETH DOROTHY) - - In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown - To beauty proud as was your mother's prime, - In that desired, delayed, incredible time, - You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own, - And the dear heart that was your baby throne, - To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme - And reason: some will call the thing sublime, - And some decry it in a knowing tone. - So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, - And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor, - Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, - Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor, - But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed, - And for the secret Scripture of the poor. - - the field, before Guillemont, Somme, - September 4, 1916. - - - - - ON LEAVING IRELAND - - (JULY 14, 1916) - -The pathos of departure is indubitable. - -I never felt my own essay "On saying Good-Bye" so profoundly _aux -trefonds du coeur_. The sun was a clear globe of blood which we caught -hanging over Ben Edar, with a trail of pure blood vibrating to us across -the waves. It dropped into darkness before we left the deck. Some lines -came to me, suggested by a friend who thought the mood cynical. - - As the sun died in blood, and hill and sea - Grew to an altar, red with mystery, - One came who knew me (it may be over-much) - Seeking the cynical and staining touch, - But I, against the great sun's burial - Thought only of bayonet-flash and bugle-call, - And saw him as God's eye upon the deep, - Closed in the dream in which no women weep, - And knew that even I shall fall on sleep. - - - - - EPIGRAM - - If grief, like fire, smoked up against our sight, - The Earth were scarfed in eternal night. - - - - - EARLY POEMS - - - - TO YOUNG IRELAND - - (WRITTEN IN 1899) - - Dead! art thou dead or sleepest, in this blank, twilight time, - When hearts are sere and pithless? Land of the sword and lyre! - Thy waxen lips are silent, thy brow is bound with rime, - Hast thou late wed with winter, child of earth's primal fire? - - The sheathed blade rusts foully, through bitter, barren years, - And harp and pen are bond slaves, thralls to thy children's - shame. - We garner cockle harvests, vain words and little fleers. - From waste lands sown with rancour, search them with proving - flame! - - We droop'd, stark sons of warfare, we blushed and slunk from - day, - While Love and Truth and Honour died in mere fretful fume. - Free brain, free brawn, is given us, then sweep we from our way - These shamers of our mother, this idle, noisome spume. - - For, lo! an army gathers around a standard clean; - I gird me dinted armour, and press to touch the throng. - Hark! Hark! The minstrels' war-hymn in very strength serene, - My harp is harsh of utterance, yet take a pupil's song. - - Then stout heart join our battle! who hail an eastern sun, - Our toil shall set this people upon earth's purest height. - Then faint heart join our battle! and if our sands be run, - At least we caoin a swan-lay upon the edge of night. - - - - - SOWING - - (WRITTEN IN 1899) - - One mocked: "Thy brain is mad with wine; - The fairies spin the threads of night, - And pour their vials of sour blight - About the roots of health, yet thine - And thou, ye garner into verse - Bright flowers to trick a solemn hearse: - The cowslip, maiden-love of spring, - The burning incense of the rose, - The austere lily, her that blows - By winter's marge--each gracious thing - Past or unborn. Weak, trusting fool! - Old Time shall file thee in his school." - - "I know not Time, his last or first; - With master hands I despoil all - His hoarded sweetness and his gall. - I crush the aeons for my thirst, - And so am mad. Pencils of fire - Limn visions of soul-large desire. - - In Faith I cast on frozen ground - An obscure life of sweat and tears; - In the far Autumn of the years - Men reap full harvests, springing round, - And judge them gifts of kindly chance, - My deed laughs through each mellow lance." - - - - - DREAMS AND DUTY - - Life is an inconstant April laughing into May, - Weeping with the aftergust of March storms laid away, - Light o' love! Her mood is gracious, fondling sunbeams stray - Out across the cloud-smoke purple of her cloud robes gray. - Let us dream among the daisies, troll a roundelay - Where the gorse gold is lavished, and the lilies pray, - Mary's nuns, whose stainless gift is Heaven's chaliced ray, - Let us twine a wreath of science, let us play our play, - Ere we fight the fight of ages, one sweet prelude-day. - - * * * * * - - The stranger heard and mocked us from the usurped throne, - Reeled in his scornful laughter, eater of hearts, blood-blown. - But the Lord God heard and heeded, therefore we do not moan; - For He has whispered to us, 'The secret shuttles fly, - Ye know not warp or weaver, yet neither swerve or sigh, - The eater of hearts shall wither, the drinker of blood shall - die. - I have set you labour, work it; I will give you increase, - For first is winter-ploughing, after, my guerdon, peace; - Ye shall pluck strength from sorrow, ripe when the sorrows - cease; - Ye shall win strength and wisdom to break the stranger's rule, - But if ye slink and babble ye are but as the fools, - Ye are but as the stranger, fit for the thorny schools." - - - - - A SONG OF VENGEANCE - - FOR COMMANDANT SCHEEPERS - (Murdered January 18, 1902) - - It is done inexpiably; thrust him deep in shameful clay, - Charge his name with every foulness, rule the world's ear as you - may-- - But the shadow at your banquet that you cannot put away! - - Weak you thought him, sickness-vanquished, given to your eager - hate. - So you played him and you slew him with your feline shows of - state, - Weak--and lo! the sanctifying touch of death has made him great. - - As a seed that broadening splits the rock on which a palace - stands, - As a trickling breach that godlike parts one land in hostile - lands, - Is the memory of Scheepers and his slaying at your hands. - - Hill and plain and stream shall guard it, town and fireside, - phrase and song; - Young men's unsubdued aspiring, old men's striving wise and - strong; - And though Hope die, Hatred may not for remembrance of his - wrong. - - Murdered leader--may God fold you in the mercy of His temple, - Sleep as sleep our unborn children, bravest hero and example-- - Float the flag or sink for ever, your red eric shall be ample. - - - - - TRANSLATIONS - - - - AT ACHENSEE, TIROL - - (From the German of A. Pickler.--Died, 1893) - - The old path up, the wood's ranked gloomy legions, - The lap and the rustle of the lake behind, - And, roused by these, from Death's more timely regions - The old thoughts fluttering in a lonely mind; - - About my way the pine-stems thick and thicker - Huddle, the mossed stone drips abundantly, - And, thro' the screen of woven branches, flicker - The bright and heaving waves of Achensee. - - Pinewood and primrose scents, the air has mixt them; - Poised butterflies, a shining sun-bathed fleet, - Sky's blue, gaunt granite jags, and buoyed betwixt them, - The cloud-fleece flushing with the day's defeat. - - The spell is on me, nor can aught deliver; - Slowly my spirit fails from life and light, - And Past and Future like a pauseless river, - Slide darkly down into a darker night. - - The red glow wans, the blackbird's trill and quaver - Dies in the sudden gloom, the broad world sleeps; - And, mixed with moon-fire flakes, the billows waver, - As though dead hands tossed vainly in their deeps. - - I think of the high dead, and that all-daring - First bard whom Orcus' self might not withstand, - I think of his vast love, and fruitless faring, - To pluck one rose from Proserpine's hand. - - The Past is an ill riddle, over-subtle, - The Thing-to-Be a rumour of a cloud, - Would know the last weft of Fate's whirring shuttle? - You _shall_ know, when they wind you in your shroud. - - Innsbruck, 18th July, 1904. - - - - - THE MONKS - - A translation from EMILE VERHAEREN. - Dedicated to Father Benedict, 1905. - - I do invoke you here, Monks Apostolical, - Fountains of dawn, torches of faith, wrought candlesticks; - Stars shedding day across the ages mystical; - Builders whose walls for scutcheon bear the Crucifix. - - Hermits who sat on white, high mountains for a throne; - Hewn marble quick with will, and strength, and angry truth; - Preachers with arms uplift and long sleeves loosely blown - Over bowed heads, and hearts gnawn of the sateless tooth. - - Windows athrob with dawn, rich with all Eastern dyes; - Vases of chastity whose fulness might not cease; - Mirrors whose depths enfold, as lakes the dreaming skies, - Hills where our dreams have breath, fair valleys brimmed with - peace. - - Seers whose souls, foreknowing death's enfranchisement, - Walked secretly where walks the mere flesh of no feet; - Titans whose breath was more than squadroned argument; - Kings strange to Rome set up in Rome's imperial seat. - - Swords hung above the pride of kings and emperors; - Lords of a prouder crown and a more grievious loss; - Warriors whose flag was spread in more tremendous wars, - Slayers of heresy with great blows of the Cross. - - Arches and aqueducts of Christian sanctity, - Pillars of silver, channels pouring from the East - Rivers of grace at which the peoples thirstily - Have drunk, and quaffed desire for the unending Feast. - - Tocsins with war and wounds in your most sombre roll; - Clarions whose proud, full throats salute the captain Christ; - Towers of the sun, whose crosses wear an aureole - Litten of that far Sun Who was the Sacrificed. - - - - - MISCELLANEOUS - - - - THE LADY OF LIFE - - I sat with her, and spoke right goldenly - Of love and beauty, and because her hair - Brushed me, I plucked down Sirius like a pear, - To braid it, and had laughter for my fee; - Yea, suing her to heavier slavery. - Had all but plucked the fruitage of her lips, - When, lo! inked clouds and absolute eclipse, - Courteous, but unmistakable ennui. - - Then did I mind me of the sorrow wailed - Thro' poets' books, and how the streaming torch - Of suns greater than Sirius has failed, - And as I shambled out the menial's door - I heard new feet sound in the statued porch - And salutations I had heard before. - - - - - WHEN OTHERS SEE US AS WE SEE OURSELVES! - - Day, with his blotting trumpet, overthrew - My city of dream, and, with his marshalled spears, - My thought that had the unperforming years - Amended and laid the base of heaven true; - But pitying, signed me priest with chrismal dew, - And I went telling of expatriate tears, - Of Hate cast out with all his sworded peers, - And tower-tops spiring to the gods anew. - One gibed, one wept, one with his drowsed air - Chilled me to very stone, but no man hearkened; - So to my love I went--ah! once love darkened - Her eyes, and in that darkness I could hide-- - Why should they couch them? In her alien stare - I knew she knew all Christs I had denied. - - - - - ENNUI - - I saw the loath moon rise, - The sun go sweatily down; - There was famine of sleep in his eyes; - She was a floating frown. - - They nodded heavily - Over an ancient roof, - With a pout o' the shoulders, she, - He with a grind o' the hoof. - - And the moon said to the sun: - "Another day to irk us!" - The sun to the touzled moon, - "Imagine it a circus." - - - - - BALLAD AUTUMNAL - -(In which Any Old Fool of an idealistic turn, explains--probably without -the palest colour of truth--to Any Other, infected with the same -disease, the failure of their lives, labours, and dreams, and the -triumph of the wise of this world.) - - Hair greying, ashen eyes, uncomely ridges, - Autumn of things ill-done, and things undone: - How all that water, slipped beneath the bridges, - Chills the adieux of our defeated sun! - What paltry, unresisted jettison - Of dear hopes held, and there the graveyard West, - With mud, miasma, mastless hulks, and midges!-- - We have not lived as wisely as the rest. - - That wasteful trick of yours, that gust prodigious - Of dreams too great for their comparison, - Blew stars ablaze, but drowned us in the ditches. - Sad, generous, valiant, tired ephemeron! - Had we but coined the vision when it shone - We, too, had ruled, and mocked the dispossessed. - Well! we have rags, the prudent have the riches-- - We have not lived as wisely as the rest. - - They squeezed us, and forgot: your Je m'en fiche's - Struck in too bloodily to pass for fun. - Our bread was nibbled by the water-witches, - All that we have is given, and is gone. - Some penny, wheedled for a currant bun, - Some shirtless, soapless starveling, uncaressed, - Still thanks us for, but not our fed ambitious-- - We have not lived as wisely as the rest. - - - ENVOI - - Prince, lift your heart up out of Acheron, - Death bows us gravely to that cleaner test. - Yea! when all books are closed, all races run, - We may have lived as wisely as the rest. - - - - - THE LOST BALL - - (A golfing rhapsody suggested by "The Lost Chord.") - - Playing one day at the seaside, I was topping my balls on the - tees, - And the sand and the bent were littered with fragments of double - D's; - Piffle supreme I was playing, and varying "slice" with "pull," - But I hit one ball a wallop like a kick of a Spanish bull. - - It whistled its way towards Heaven in a rocket's magic flight; - It cancelled the crimson sunset like the shroud of a moonless - night; - It knocked the paint off a rainbow and scattered the stars like - bees; - And sped thro' the stellar spaces as tho' it would never cease. - - It looped the loop like Pegoud in parabolic curves; - It was salve to my wounded feelings and balm to my ruffled - nerves; - It clove my opponent's gizzard like the stab of a Lascar's - knife; - And produced the hardest swearing I have ever heard in my life. - - I have sought in the bent and the bushes that one magnificent - ball; - It may be Antartic crystals were broken by its fall; - It may be that Death as Caddy may light on the spot it fell; - I may have holed out in Heaven or find myself trapped in Hell. - - - - - POLITICAL - - - - PARNELL - - (For the unveiling, 1st October, 1911) - - Tears will betray all pride, but when ye mourn him, - Be it in soldier wise; - As for a captain who hath gently borne him, - And in the midnight dies. - - Fewness of words is best; he was too great - For ours or any phrase. - Love could not guess, nor the slipped hound of hate - Track that soul's secret ways. - - Signed with a sign, unbroken, unrevealed, - His Calvary he trod; - So let him keep, where all world-wounds are healed - The silences of God. - - Yet is he Ireland's too: a flaming coal - Lit at the stars, and sent - To burn the sin of patience from her soul, - The scandal of content. - - A name to be a trumpet of attack; - And, in the evil stress, - For England's iron No! to fling her back - A grim granatic Yes. - - He taught us more, this best as it was last: - When comrades go apart - They shall go greatly, cancelling the past, - Slaying the kindlier heart. - - Friendship and love, all clean things and unclean, - Shall be as drifted leaves, - Spurned by our Ireland's feet, that queenliest Queen - Who gives not but receives. - - So freedom comes, and comes no other wise; - He gave--"The Chief"--gave well; - Limned in his blood across your clearing skies - Look up and read; Parnell! - - - - - THE HOUSE OF LORDS: AN EPITAPH - - So you proscribe, and you forbid - Peace, and the trooping ghosts of hate - Enfranchise of the coffin-lid-- - Your lordships' lordship speaks too late. - - That word had held when yours, for you, - Thieving and reaving smote us first: - If souls were crooked, swords were true; - They took and kept because they durst. - - Still, though the pride of naked swords - Passed to a meaner, stouter hand, - You said, and it was done, my lords, - Yours was the law, and yours the land. - - You clove the priest, you robbed the shrine, - With spoil of Paul and Peter fat, - Brimmed altar-cups with altar-wine - To toast your new Magnificat. - - The poor, who are the lords of death, - To you were mud in foundered ways; - Your sun was red Elizabeth, - Your noon, the Dutchman's Penal days. - - Hunger and halters, grey despair, - Marah of exile, coastless seas, - Baal for master-minister-- - You gave, my lords, and took your ease. - - And then, in Paris, patience broke; - "Who is this thing that should oppress?" - Men asked: "And shall we bear his yoke. - This idle whiff of nothingness?" - - That was your lordships' epitaph; - Still might you sell a nation's soul, - Spit on its tomb, and yawn and laugh, - But, thief to thief, the judgment stole. - - This Ireland whom my lords despised-- - Languid behind inverted thumbs-- - She who believed and agonised - Leads on the loud, victorious drums. - - Wave huddled wave, and now the last - Havocs your castle, built of sand-- - We take the future, you the past, - Ours is the State, the Flag, the Land. - - - - - REASON IN RHYME - - Will Watson, of the still unanchored art; - What random gust, what overwhelming sea - Has riven you apart - From us, and from the flagship of the free? - You whose rich phrase, and vibrant, wont to be - Trumpet and drum of onset and attack; - Who, when of Abdul's ways you stooped to sing, - Would give us just the dire, full-throated thing; - Now, when that much-damned man has got the sack, - You change your tune, and make to pipe us back - From honour, and the task of Liberty! - Why argue, though? The plain position is - You are mistaken in your premises. - You blind your sight with hot, emotional mists, - Your way of thought is greatly too morose - And moist and lachrymose, - For us, a muddled State's last realists. - We Irish, to be brief, - Are nowise grievers for the sake of grief. - I pray you, dry those sympathetic tears, - They rust the will; and, Will, your nation's sin - Is no dead shame, meet to be covered in, - But a live fact that sears. - Cancel the past? Soothly when it befalls - That ye amend the present, and are just, - Go knock your head on Dublin Castle walls: - Are they irrelevant, historic dust, - Or a hard present-tense? - Search through the large print of the Statute Book - For your much-valued Lords' benevolence, - And swept in vision westward, snatch a look - At that dim land, where hunger claims to be - The honoured guest in every family; - And the slain sun writes, in a scribble of shame, - The word of utter Hell, Clanricarde's name. - Go South and North; - Weep, if you will, along the dismal quays, - Watching the unreturning ships go forth - To fling our seed of strength and hope and worth - In far, untributary ways. - And then the soul is something--at least in verse. - Ours, poet, is to be a thing of straw, - A stained, numb thing, that sits without the law - Of yours, great master of the universe? - Most nobly planned! But, Watson, there's a text-- - Done in stout English in King James's reign-- - Which says that souls are not to be annexed, - Not for the whole world's gain. - Cancel the past! Why, yes! We, too, have thought - Of conflict crowned and drowned in olives of peace; - But when Cuchullin and Ferdiadh fought - There lacked no pride of warrior courtesies, - And so must this fight end. - Bond, from the toil of hate we may not cease: - Free, we are free to be your friend. - And when you make your banquet, and we come, - Soldier with equal soldier must we sit, - Closing a battle, not forgetting it. - With not a name to hide, - This mate and mother of valiant "rebels" dead - Must come with all her history on her head. - We keep the past for pride: - No deepest peace shall strike our poets dumb: - No rawest squad of all Death's volunteers, - No rudest man who died - To tear your flag down in the bitter years, - But shall have praise, and three times thrice again, - When at that table men shall drink with men. - - - - - ASQUITH IN DUBLIN - - (AUGUST, 1912) - - You stepped your steps, and the music marched, and the torches - tossed - As you filled your streets with your comic Pentecost, - And the little English went by and the lights grew dim; - We, dumb in the shouting crowd, we thought of Him. - - Of Him, too great for our souls and ways, - Too great for laughter or love, praise or dispraise, - Of Him, and the wintry swords, and the closing gloom-- - Of Him going forth alone to His lonely doom. - - No shouts, my Dublin then! Not a light nor a cry-- - You kept them all till now, when the little English go by! - - - - - ULSTER - - (A REPLY TO RUDYARD KIPLING) - - The red, redeeming dawn - Kindled in Easter skies, - Falls like God's judgment on - Lawyers, and lords, and lies. - What care these evil things, - Though menaced and perplexed, - While Kipling's banjo strings - Blaspheme a sacred text? - - Never did freemen stand, - Never were captains met, - From Dargai to the Rand, - From Parnell to De Wet, - Never, on native sod, - Weak Justice fared the worst, - But Kipling's Cockney "Gawd" - Most impotently cursed. - - So now, when Lenten years - Burgeon, at last, to bless - This land of Faith and Tears - With fruitful nobleness, - The poet, for a coin, - Hands to the gabbling rout - A bucketful of Boyne - To put the sunrise out. - - "Ulster" is ours, not yours, - Is ours to have and hold, - Our hills and lakes and moors - Have shaped her in our mould. - Derry to Limerick Walls - Fused us in battle flame; - Limerick to Derry calls - One strong-shared Irish name. - - We keep the elder faith, - Not slain by Cromwell's sword; - Nor bribed to subtler death - By William's broken word. - Free from those chains, and free - From hate for hate endured, - We share the liberty - Our lavish blood assured. - - One place, one dream, one doom, - One task and toil assigned, - Union of plough and loom - Have bound us and shall bind. - The wounds of labour healed, - Life rescued and made fair-- - There lies the battlefield - Of Ulster's holy war. - - - - - TO IRELAND - - Men so worthy - Suffered for Thee, - Men so poor can die; - Then come gather - All, or rather - Those who ask not why. - - - - - WAR POEMS - - - - PADDY - - (After Mr. Kipling) - - I went into the talkin' shop to see about the Bill; - The Premier 'e ups and says: "We're waitin' ... waitin' still!" - The Tories grinned, and Balfour strung our gamble Haman-high, - I outs into the street again, and to meself sez I: - O, it's Paddy this, and Paddy that, an' "A cattle-driven crew!" - But 'twas "Murphy o' the Munsters!" when the trump of battle - blew. - When the wind of battle blew, my boys, when the blast of battle - blew, - It was Burke, and Shea and Kelly when we marched to Waterloo. - - I looked into a newspaper to see about the land - That bred the man who broke the sin that Bonaparte planned; - They'd room for cricket scores, and tips, and trash of every - kind, - But when I asked of Ireland's cause, it seemed to be behind. - For it's Paddy this, and Paddy that, and "Don't annoy us, - please!" - But it's "Irish Rifles forward--Fast!" when the bullets talk - like bees, - When the bullets yawn like bees, my boys, when the bullets yawn - like bees, - It's "Connaught blood is good enough" when they're chanting - R.I.P's. - - Yes! Sneerin' round at Irishmen, and Irish speech and ways - Is cheaper--much--than snatchin' guns from battle's red amaze: - And when the damned Death's-Head-Dragoons roll up the ruddy tide - The _Times_ won't spare a Smith to tell how Dan O'Connell died. - For it's Paddy this, and Paddy that, and "The Fifth'll prate and - prance!" - But it's "Corks and Inniskillings--Front!" when Hell is loose in - France, - When Clare and Kerry take the call that crowns the shrapnel - dance, - O, it's "Find the Dublin Fusiliers!" when Hell is loose in - France. - - We ain't no saints or scholars much, but fightin' men and clean, - We've paid the price, and three times thrice for Wearin' o' the - Green. - We held our hand out frank and fair, and half forgot Parnell, - For Ireland's hope and England's too--and it's yours to save or - sell. - For it's Paddy this, and Paddy that, "Who'll stop the Uhlan - blade?" - But Tommy Fitz from Malahide, and Monaghan's McGlade, - When the ranks are set for judgment, lads, and the roses droop - and fade, - It's "Ireland in the firin' line!" when the price of God is - paid. - - - - - SERGEANT MIKE O'LEARY - - It was Sergeant Mike O'Leary who broke the barricade, - Who took the chance, and won the Cross that crowns the bayonet - trade; - 'Twas "M'anam do Dhia," and "How's your heart," and "How could - we forget?" - But Michael from Inchigeela will fill a ballad yet. - - Oh! a fair and pleasant land is Cork for wit and courtesy, - Ballyvourney East and Baile Dubh and Kilworth to the sea: - And when they light the turf to-night, spit, stamp, swear as of - yore, - It's the Sergeant Mike O'Leary's ghosts that ward the southern - shore. - - - - - A NATION'S FREEDOM - - Word of the Tsar! and the drowse malign is broken; - The stone is rolled from the tomb and Poland free, - This is the strong evangel. The guns have spoken; - And the scribble of flame of the guns is Liberty. - - Have you not met her, my lords, a-walk in the garden, - Ranging the dawn, even she, the three times dead? - Nay! But in bondage, sundered from light and pardon-- - But now the water is wine, and the marriage read. - - Word of the Tsar! My lords, I think of another - Crowned with dolour, forbidden the sun abased, - Bloodied, unbroken, abiding--Ah! Queen, my Mother, - I have prayed the feet of the Judgment of God to haste. - - Count me the price in blood that we have not squandered, - Spendthrifts of blood from our cradle, wastefully true, - Name me the sinister fields where the Wild Geese wandered, - Lille and Cremona and Landen and Waterloo. - - When the white steel-foam swept on the tidal onset, - When the last wave lapsed, and the sea turned back to its sleep, - We were there in the waste and the wreckage, Queen of the - Sunset! - Paying the price of the dreams that cannot sleep. - - The altar is set; we uplift again the chalice; - The priest is in purple; the bell booms to the sacrifice. - The trumpets summon to death, and Ireland rallies-- - Tool or free? We have paid, and over-paid, the price. - - Word of the Tsar! And Russia rises to vision, - Poland and Ireland--thus, my lords, was an augured fate. - The days draw in, and the ways narrow down to decision-- - Will they chaffer, and cheapen, and ruin, or yield to be great? - -Written in Belgium, August, 1914 - - - - - A SONG OF THE IRISH ARMIES - - A wind blew out of the Prussian plain; - It scourged Liege, and it broke Louvain, - And Belgium shook with the tramp of Cain, - That a Kaiser might be mad. - "Iron is God!"--and they served him well-- - "Honour a mark for shot and shell." - So they loosed the devils out of Hell - From Birr to Allahabad. - - - THE OLD SOLDIERS SING: - - But we took them from Mons to the banks of the Marne, - And helped them back on their red return; - We can swim the Rhine if the bridges burn, - And Mike O'Leary's the lad! - - Not for this did our fathers fall; - That truth, and pity, and love, and all - Should break in dust at a trumpet call, - Yea! all things clean and old. - Not to this had we sacrificed: - To sit at the last where the slayers diced, - With blood-hot hands for the robes of Christ, - And snatch at the Devil's gold. - - - THE NEW SOLDIERS SING: - - To Odin's challenge we cried Amen! - We stayed the plough, and laid by the pen, - And we shouldered our guns like gentlemen, - That the wiser weak should hold. - - Blood on the land, and blood on the sea? - So it stands as ordained to be, - Stamp, and signet, and guarantee - Of the better ways we knew. - - Time for the plough when the sword has won; - The loom will wait on the crashing gun, - And the hands of peace drop benison - When the task of death is through. - - - OLD AND NEW SOLDIERS SING: - - Then lift the flag of the Last Crusade! - And fill the ranks of the Last Brigade! - March on to the fields where the world's re-made, - And the Ancient Dreams come true! - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND PARODIES *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38898 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. 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