Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Thomas DArcy McGee 182568The Celtic Cross
McGee-ThT
Firm, broad, and tall,
The Celtic Cross that marks our Father-land,
Amid them all!
Druids and Danes and Saxons vainly rage
Around its base;
It standeth shock on shock, and age on age,
Star of our scatter’d race.
Death of our Lord,
Around thee long have slept our martyr dead
Sward over sward.
An hundred bishops I myself can count
Among the slain:
Chiefs, captains, rank and file, a shining mount
Of God’s ripe grain.
Smote thee not down;
On headland steep, on mountain summit hoar,
In mart and town,
In Glendalough, in Ara, in Tyrone,
We find thee still,
Thy open arms still stretching to thine own,
O’er town and lough and hill.
The guilty fools!
How time must mock their antiquated toil
And broken tools!
Cranmer and Cromwell from thy grasp retir’d,
Baffled and thrown;
William and Anne to sap thy site conspir’d,—
The rest is known.
Belov’d of God!
Shield thy dear Church from the impending scaith,
Or, if the rod
Must scourge it yet again, inspire and raise
To emprise high
Men like the heroic race of other days,
Who joyed to die.
Their Church’s fate?
The day is not—the day was never near—
Could desolate
The Destin’d Island, all whose seedy clay
Is holy ground:
Its cross shall stand till that predestin’d day
When Erin’s self is drown’d.