Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
The Four Masters
By Thomas DArcy McGee (18251868)
M
Many chancels hung in white,
Many schools, and many abbeys,
Glorious in our Father’s sight;
Yet whene’er I go a pilgrim,
Back, dear Holy Isle, to thee,
May my filial footsteps bear me
To that abbey by the sea,—
To that abbey, roofless, doorless,
Shrineless, monkless, though it be!
All to pride and triumph tends;
Art is liegeman to religion,
Genius speaks, and song ascends.
As the day-beam to the sailor,
Lighting up the wreckers’ shore,
So the present lustre shineth
On the barrenness before,—
But no gleam rests on that abbey,
Silent by Tyrconnel’s shore.
And I see them as I gaze,
Four meek men around the cresset,
With the scrolls of other days;
Four unwearied scribes who treasure
Every word and every line,
Saving every ancient sentence
As if writ by hands divine.
Tell me what is it you read?
Is there malice or ambition
In the will or in the deed?
O no! no! the angel Duty
Calmly lights the dusky walls,
And their four worn right hands follow
Where the angel’s radiance falls.
Do these eager pensmen dream;
Darkness shrouds the hills of Banba,
Sorrow sits by every stream;
One by one the lights that led her,
Hour by hour, were quenched in gloom;
But the patient, sad Four Masters
Toil on in their lonely room,—
Duty thus defying doom.
Over bound and bearded sheaves,
As the murmur in the beehives,
Softly heard on summer eves,
So the rustle of the vellum,
So the anxious voices sound,
So the deep expectant silence
Seems to listen all around.
Shines the full moon through the night,
While far to the northward glances
All the bay in waves of light.
Tufted isle and splintered headland
Smile and soften in her ray,
Yet within their dusky chamber
The meek Masters toil assay,
Finding all too short the day.
From the souls of mourners wrung;
Hear the soaring aspirations,
Barbed with the ancestral tongue;
For the houseless sons of chieftains,
For their brethren afar,
For the mourning Mother Island,
These their aspirations are.
“Father, grant one other prayer,—
Bless the lord of Moy-O’Gara,
Bless his lady, and his heir;
Send the generous chief, whose bounty
Cheers, sustains us in our task,
Health, success, renown, salvation,—
Father! this is all we ask.”
All their trust, with half their toil,
Were but fit to trace their footsteps
Through the Annals of the Isle;
O that the bright angel, Duty,
Guardian of our tasks might be,
Teach us as she taught our Masters,
In that abbey by the sea,
Faithful, grateful, just, to be!