William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
The Wake of William OrrWilliam Drennan (17541820)
T
Wake him not with woman’s cries;
Mourn the way that manhood ought—
Sit in silent trance of thought.
Morals pure and manners kind;
In his head, as on a hill,
Virtue placed her citadel.
Truth he spoke, and acted truth.
‘Countrymen,
And died for what our Saviour died.
Let it not Thy vengeance move—
Let it not Thy lightnings draw—
A nation guillotined by law.
Thou wert early taught to mourn;
Warfare of six hundred years!
Epochs marked with blood and tears!
Or flung reward to human hounds,
Each one pulled and tore his share,
Heedless of thy deep despair.
Heap of uncementing sand!
Crumbled by a foreign weight:
And by worse, domestic hate.
Make this mad confusion cease;
O’er the mental chaos move,
Through it
Brothers’ blood will not unite;
Holy oil and holy water
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter.
The widowed mother with her child—
Child new stirring in the womb!
Husband waiting for the tomb!
Calm her soul and whisper peace—
Cord, or axe, or guillotine,
Make the sentence—not the sin.
Watch with us, but do not weep:
Watch with us thro’ dead of night—
But expect the morning light.