When the bud was on the tree;
And I said, in every fresh-ploughed field beholding
The sowers striding free,
Scattering broadcast forth the corn in golden plenty
On the quick seed-clasping soil,
‘Even such, this day, among the fresh-stirred hearts of Erin,
Thomas Davis, is thy toil!’
I sat by Ballyshannon in the summer,
And saw the salmon leap;
And I said, as I beheld the gallant creatures
Spring glittering from the deep,
Thro’ the spray, and thro’ the prone heaps striving onward
To the calm clear streams above,
‘So seekest thou thy native founts of freedom, Thomas Davis,
In thy brightness of strength and love!’
I stood on Derrybawn in the autumn,
And I heard the eagle call,
With a clangorous cry of wrath and lamentation
That filled the wide mountain hall,
O’er the bare deserted place of his plundered eyrie;
And I said, as he screamed and soared,
‘So callest thou, thou wrathful-soaring Thomas Davis,
For a nation’s rights restored!’
And, alas! to think but now, and thou art lying,
Dear Davis, dead at thy mother’s knee;
And I, no mother near, on my own sick-bed,
That face on earth shall never see:
I may lie and try to feel that I am not dreaming,
I may lie and try to say, ‘Thy will be done’ –
But a hundred such as I will never comfort Erin
For the loss of the noble son!
Young husbandman of Erin’s fruitful seed-time,
In the fresh track of danger’s plough!
Who will walk the heavy, toilsome, perilous furrow
Girt with freedom’s seed-sheets now?
Who will banish with the wholesome crop of knowledge
The flaunting weed and the bitter thorn,
Now that thou thyself art but a seed for hopeful planting
Against the Resurrection morn?
Young salmon of the flood-tide of freedom
That swells round Erin’s shore!
Thou wilt leap against their loud oppressive torrent
Of bigotry and hate no more:
Drawn downward by their prone material instinct,
Let them thunder on their rocks and foam –
Thou hast leapt, aspiring soul, to founts beyond their raging
Where troubled waters never come!
But I grieve not, eagle of the empty eyrie,
That thy wrathful cry is still;
And that the songs alone of peaceful mourners
Are heard today on Erin’s hill;
Better far, if brothers’ war be destined for us
(God avert that horrid day, I pray!),
That ere our hands be stained with slaughter fratricidal
Thy warm heart should be cold in clay.
But my trust is strong in God, who made us brothers,
That He will not suffer those right hands
Which thou hast joined in holier rites than wedlock
To draw opposing brands.
Oh, many a tuneful tongue that thou mad’st vocal
Would lie cold and silent then;
And songless long once more, should often-widowed Erin
Mourn the loss of her brave young men.
Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise,
’Tis on you my hopes are set,
In manliness, in kindliness, in justice,
To make Erin a nation yet:
Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing,
In union or in severance, free and strong –
And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis
Let the greater praise belong.
The Burial of King Cormac
‘C rom C ruach and his sub-gods twelve’
Said Cormac, ‘are but carven treene;
The axe that made them, haft or helve,
Had worthier of our worship been.
‘But He who made the tree to grow
And hid in earth the iron-stone,
And made the man with mind to know
The axe’s use, is God alone.’
Anon to priests of Crom was brought –
Where, girded in their service dread,
They minister’d on red Moy Slaught –
Word of the words King Cormac said.
They loosed their curse against the King –
They cursed him in his flesh and bones –
And daily in their mystic ring
They turn’d the maledictive stones,
Till, where at meat the monarch sate,
Amid the revel and the wine,
He choked upon the food he ate,
At Sletty, southward of the Boyne.
High vaunted then the priestly throng,
And far and wide they noised abroad,
With trump and loud liturgic song,
The praise of their avenging god.
But ere the voice was wholly spent
That priest and prince should still obey,
To awed attendants o’er him bent
Great Cormac gather’d breath to say:
‘Spread not the beds of Brugh for me
When restless death-bed’s use is done;
But bury me at Rosnaree,
And face me to the rising sun.
‘For all the Kings who lie in Brugh
Put trust in gods of wood and stone;
And ’twas at Ross that first I knew
One, Unseen, who is God alone.
‘His glory lightens from the East;
His message soon shall reach our shore;
And idol-god and cursing priest,
Shall plague us from Moy Slaught no more.’
Dead Cormac on his bier they laid.
‘He reign’d a king for forty years,
And shame it were,’ his captains said,
‘He lay not with his royal peers.
‘His grandsire, Hundred-Battle, sleeps
Serene in Brugh; and all around
Dead kings in stone sepulchral keeps
Protect the sacred burial ground.
‘What though a dying man should rave
Of changes o’er the Eastern sea?
In Brugh of Boyne shall be his grave,
And not in noteless Rosnaree.’
Then northward forth they bore the bier
And down from Sletty side they drew,
With horseman and with charioteer,
To cross the fords of Boyne to Brugh.
There came a breath of finer air,
That touch’d the Boyne with ruffling wings;
It stirr’d him in his sedgy lair,
And in his mossy moorland springs.
And as the burial train came down
With dirge and savage dolorous shows,
Across their pathway, broad and brown,
The deep full-hearted river rose;
From bank to bank through all his fords,
’Neath blackening squalls he swell’d and boil’d,
And thrice the wondering Gentile lords
Essay’d to cross, and thrice recoil’d.
Then forth stepp’d grey-hair’d warriors four;
They said: ‘Through angrier floods than these
On link’d shields once our King we bore
From Dread-Spear and the hosts of Deece.
‘And long as loyal will holds good,
And limbs respond with helpful thews,
Nor flood, nor fiend within the flood,
Shall bar him of his burial dues.’
With slanted necks they stoop’d to lift;
They heaved him up to neck and chin;
And, pair and pair, with footsteps swift,
Lock’d arm and shoulder, bore him in.
<
br /> ’Twas brave to see them leave the shore;
To mark the deep’ning surges rise,
And fall subdued in foam before
The tension of their striding thighs.
’Twas brave, when now a spear-cast out,
Breast-high the battling surges ran;
For weight was great, and limbs were stout
And loyal man put trust in man.
But ere they reach’d the middle deep,
Nor steadying weight of clay they bore,
Nor strain of sinewy limbs could keep
Their feet beneath the swerving four.
And now they slide, and now they swim,
And now, amid the blackening squall,
Grey locks afloat, with clutchings grim,
They plunge around the floating pall;
While as a youth with practised spear
Through justling crowds bears off the ring,
Boyne from their shoulders caught the bier
And proudly bore away the king.
At morning, on the grassy marge
Of Rosnaree, the corpse was found;
And shepherds at their early charge
Entomb’d it in the peaceful ground.
A tranquil spot – a hopeful sound
Comes from the ever youthful stream,
And still on daisied mead and mound
The dawn delays with tenderer beam.
Round Cormac Spring renews her buds;
In march perpetual by his side,
Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.
And life and time rejoicing run
From age to age their wonted way;
But still he waits the risen Sun,
For still ’tis only dawning Day.
Deirdre’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach
The lions of the hill are gone,
And I am left alone – alone –
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
For I am sick, and fain would sleep!
The falcons of the wood are flown,
And I am left alone – alone –
Dig the grave both deep and wide,
And let us slumber side by side.
The dragons of the rock are sleeping,
Sleep that wakes not for our weeping:
Dig the grave and make it ready;
Lay me on my true Love’s body.
Lay their spears and bucklers bright
By the warriors’ sides aright;
Many a day the Three before me
On their linkèd bucklers bore me.
Lay upon the low grave floor,
’Neath each head, the blue claymore;
Many a time the noble Three
Redden’d those blue blades for me.
Lay the collars, as is meet,
Of their greyhounds at their feet;
Many a time for me have they
Brought the tall red deer to bay.
Oh! to hear my true Love singing,
Sweet as sound of trumpets ringing:
Like the sway of ocean swelling
Roll’d his deep voice round our dwelling.
Oh! to hear the echoes pealing
Round our green and fairy sheeling,
When the Three, with soaring chorus,
Pass’d the silent skylark o’er us.
Echo now, sleep, morn and even –
Lark alone enchant the heaven! –
Ardan’s lips are scant of breath, –
Neesa’s tongue is cold in death.
Stag, exult on glen and mountain –
Salmon, leap from loch to fountain –
Heron, in the free air warm ye –
Usnach’s Sons no more will harm ye!
Erin’s stay no more you are,
Rulers of the ridge of war;
Never more ’twill be your fate
To keep the beam of battle straight.
Woe is me! by fraud and wrong –
Traitors false and tyrants strong –
Fell Clan Usnach, bought and sold,
For Barach’s feast and Conor’s gold!
Woe to Eman, roof and wall! –
Woe to Red Branch, hearth and hall! –
Tenfold woe and black dishonour
To the false and foul Clan Conor!
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
Sick I am, and fain would sleep!
Dig the grave and make it ready,
Lay me on my true Love’s body.
Willy Gilliland: An Ulster Ballad
Up in the mountain solitudes, and in a rebel ring,
He has worshipped God upon the hill, in spite of church and king;
And sealed his treason with his blood on Bothwell Bridge he hath;
So he must fly his father’s land, or he must die the death;
For comely Claverhouse has come along with grim Dalzell,
And his smoking rooftree testifies they’ve done their errand well.
In vain to fly his enemies he fled his native land;
Hot persecution waited him upon the Carrick strand;
His name was on the Carrick cross, a price was on his head,
A fortune to the man that brings him in alive or dead!
And so on moor and mountain, from the Lagan to the Bann,
From house to house, and hill to hill, he lurked an out-lawed man.
At last, when in false company he might no longer bide,
He stayed his houseless wanderings upon the Collon side,
There in a cave all underground he laired his heathy den,
Ah, many a gentleman was fain to earth like hill fox then!
With hound and fishing-rod he lived on hill and stream by day;
At night, betwixt his fleet greyhound and his bonny mare he lay.
It was a summer evening, and, mellowing and still,
Glenwhirry to the setting sun lay bare from hill to hill;
For all that valley pastoral held neither house nor tree,
But spread abroad and open all, a full fair sight to see,
From Slemish foot to Collon top lay one unbroken green,
Save where in many a silver coil the river glanced between.
And on the river’s grassy bank, even from the morning grey,
He at the angler’s pleasant sport had spent the summer day;
Ah! many a time and oft I’ve spent the summer day from dawn,
And wondered, when the sunset came, where time and care had gone,
Along the reaches curling fresh, the wimpling pools and streams,
Where he that day his cares forgot in those delightful dreams.
His blithe work done, upon a bank the outlaw rested now,
And laid the basket from his back, the bonnet from his brow;
And there, his hand upon the Book, his knee upon the sod,
He filled the lonely valley with the gladsome word of God;
And for a persecuted kirk, and for her martyrs dear,
And against a godless church and king he spoke up loud and clear.
And now upon his homeward way, he crossed the Collon high,
And over bush and bank and brae he sent abroad his eye;
But all was darkening peacefully in grey and purple haze,
The thrush was silent in the banks, the lark upon the braes –
When suddenly shot up a blaze, from the cave’s mouth it came;
And troopers’ steeds and troopers’ caps are glancing in the same!
He couched among the heather, and he saw them, as he lay,
With three long yells at parting, ride lightly east away:
Then down with heavy heart he came, to sorry cheer came he,
For ashes black were crackling where the green whins used to be,
And stretched among the prickly comb, his heart’s blood smoking round,
From slender nose to breast-bone cleft, lay dead his good greyhound!
‘They’ve slain my dog, the
Philistines! They’ve ta’en my bonny mare!’
He plunged into the smoking hole; no bonny beast was there –
He groped beneath his burning bed (it burned him to the bone,)
Where his good weapon used to be, but broadsword there was none;
He reeled out of the stifling den, and sat down on a stone,
And in the shadows of the night ’twas thus he made his moan –
‘I am a houseless outcast: I have neither bed nor board,
Nor living thing to look upon, nor comfort save the Lord:
Yet many a time were better men in worse extremity;
Who succoured them in their distress, He now will succour me, –
He now will succour me, I know; and, by His holy Name,
I’ll make the doers of this deed right dearly rue the same!
‘My bonny mare! I’ve ridden you when Claver’se rode behind,
And from the thumbscrew and the boot you bore me like the wind;
And, while I have the life you saved, on your sleek flank I swear,
Episcopalian rowel shall never ruffle hair!
Though sword to wield they’ve left me none – yet Wallace wight, I wis,
Good battle did on Irvine side wi’ waur weapon than this.’ –
His fishing-rod with both his hands he griped it as he spoke,
And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke;
The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad,
But, grasping the thick hickory butt, with spike of iron shod,
He ground the sharp spear to a point; then pulled his bonnet down,
And, meditating black revenge, set forth for Carrick town.
The sun shines bright on Carrick wall and Carrick Castle grey,
And up thine aisle, St. Nicholas, has ta’en his morning way,
And to the North-Gate sentinel displayeth far and near
Sea, hill, and tower, and all thereon, in dewy freshness clear,
Save where, behind a ruined wall, himself alone to view,
Is peering from the ivy green a bonnet of the blue.
The sun shines red on Carrick wall and Carrick Castle old,
And all the western buttresses have changed their grey for gold;
And from thy shrine, Saint Nicholas, the pilgrim of the sky
Has gone in rich farewell, as fits such royal votary;
But, as his last red glance he takes down past black Slieve-a-true,
He leaveth where he found it first, the bonnet of the blue.
Again he makes the turrets grey stand out before the hill;
Constant as their foundation rock, there is the bonnet still!
And now the gates are open’d, and forth in gallant show
Prick jeering grooms and burghers blythe, and troopers in a row;
But one has little care for jest, so hard bested is he,
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 45