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IRISH SONGS AND LYRICS 481 |
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And shroudless dead on their rocky beds; Nerve and muscle, and heart and brain, Lost to Ireland—lost in vain. |
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" A million a decade ! " Count ten by ten,
Column and line of the record fair; Each unit stands for ten thousand men, Staring with blank, dead eye-balls there Strewn like blasted trees on the sod, Men that were made in the image of God.
11A million a decade ! "—and nothing done;
The Caesars had less to conquer a world ;
And the war for the right not yet begun,
The banner of freedom not yet unfurled ;
The soil is fed by the weed that dies;
If forest leaves fall, yet they fertilize.
But ye—dead, dead, not climbing the height, Not clearing a path for the future to tread ; Not opening the golden portals of light,
Ere the gate was choked by your piled-up dead: Martyrs ye, yet never a name Shines on the golden roll of fame.
Had ye rent one gyve of the festering chain,
Strangling the life of the nation's soul; Poured your life-blood by river and plain,
Yet touched with your dead hand freedom's goal; Left of heroes one footprint more On our soil, tho' stamped in your gore — |
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