Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
I. PatriotismIreland
Denis Florence Mac Carthy (1817–1882)T
They are dying! they are dying! where the crowded herds are lowing:
They are gasping for existence where the streams of life are flowing,
And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing!
Do we dream? Can it be,
In this land, at this hour,
With the blossom on the tree,
In the gladsome month of May,
When the young lambs play,
When Nature looks around
On her waking children now,
The seed within the ground,
The bud upon the bough?
Is it right, is it fair,
That we perish of despair
In this land, on this soil,
Where our destiny is set,
Which we cultured with our toil,
And watered with our sweat?
We have ploughed, we have sown
But the crop was not our own;
We have reaped, but harpy hands
Swept the harvest from our lands;
We were perishing for food,
When lo! in pitying mood,
Our kindly rulers gave
The fat fluid of the slave,
While our corn filled the manger
Of the war-horse of the stranger!
Is this land preordained,
For the present and the past
And the future, to be chained,—
To be ravaged, to be drained,
To be robbed, to be spoiled,
To be hushed, to be whipt,
Its soaring pinions clipt,
And its every effort foiled?
But to perish and to die?
Is this all our destiny below,—
That our bodies, as they rot,
May fertilize the spot
Where the harvests of the stranger grow?
Far, far better now, though late,
That we seek some other land and try some other zone;
The coldest, bleakest shore
Will surely yield us more
Than the storehouse of the stranger that we dare not call our own.
Who from Liberty’s full breast
Have fed us, who are orphans beneath a step-dame’s frown,
Behold our happy state,
And weep your wretched fate
That you share not in the splendors of our empire and our crown!
Thou great tiaraed priest,
Thou sanctified Rienzi of Rome and of the earth,—
Or thou who bear’st control
Over golden Istambol,
Who felt for our misfortunes and helped us in our dearth,—
Call your wisest of the wise,
Your muftis and your ministers, your men of deepest lore;
Let the sagest of your sages
Ope our island’s mystic pages,
And explain unto your highness the wonders of our shore.
Where the patient peasants toil
Beneath the summer’s sun and the watery winter sky;
Where they tend the golden grain
Till it bends upon the plain,
Then reap it for the stranger, and turn aside to die;
And store the snowy fleece
Till they send it to their masters to be woven o’er the waves;
Where, having sent their meat
For the foreigner to eat,
Their mission is fulfilled, and they creep into their graves.
’T is for this they are dying where the crowded herds are lowing,
’T is for this they are dying where the streams of life are flowing,
And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing!