THEY are free at last! They can face the sun; | |
| Their hearts now throb with the world’s pulsation; | |
| Their prisons are open—their night is done; | |
| ’Tis England’s mercy and reparation! | |
| |
| The years of their doom have slowly sped— | 5 |
| Their limbs are withered—their ties are riven; | |
| Their children are scattered, their friends are dead— | |
| But the prisons are open—the “crime” forgiven. | |
| |
| God! what a threshold they stand upon: | |
| The world has passed on while they were buried; | 10 |
| In the glare of the sun they walk alone | |
| On the grass-grown track where the crowd has hurried. | |
| |
| Haggard and broken and seared with pain, | |
| They seek the remembered friends and places; | |
| Men shuddering turn, and gaze again | 15 |
| At the deep-drawn lines on their altered faces. | |
| |
| What do they read on the pallid page? | |
| What is the tale of these woeful letters? | |
| A lesson as old as their country’s age, | |
| Of a love that is stronger than stripes and fetters. | 20 |
| |
| In the blood of the slain some dip their blade, | |
| And swear by the stain the foe to follow; | |
| But a deadlier oath might here be made, | |
| On the wasted bodies and faces hollow. | |
| |
| Irishmen! You who have kept the peace— | 25 |
| Look on these forms diseased and broken: | |
| Believe, if you can, that their late release, | |
| When their lives are sapped, is a good-will token. | |
| |
| Their hearts are the bait on England’s hook; | |
| For this are they dragged from her hopeless prison; | 30 |
| She reads her doom in the Nation’s book— | |
| She fears the day that has darkly risen; | |
| |
| She reaches her hand for Ireland’s aid— | |
| Ireland, scourged, contemned, derided; | |
| She begs from the beggar her hate has made; | 35 |
| She seeks for the strength her guile divided. | |
| |
| She offers a bribe—ah, God above! | |
| Behold the price of the desecration: | |
| The hearts she has tortured for Irish love | |
| She brings as a bribe to the Irish nation! | 40 |
| |
| O, blind and cruel! She fills her cup | |
| With conquest and pride, till its red wine splashes: | |
| But shrieks at the draught as she drinks it up— | |
| Her wine has been turned to blood and ashes. | |
| |
| We know her—our Sister! Come on the storm! | 45 |
| God send it soon and sudden upon her: | |
| The race she has shattered and sought to deform | |
| Shall laugh as she drinks the black dishonor. | |
| |
