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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO ERIN, by                    
First Line: O ireland! Ireland! Proud hearts are breaking
Last Line: Or morning or midnight brings!
Alternate Author Name(s): Eva; O'doherty, Kevin, Mrs.


O IRELAND! Ireland! proud hearts are breaking
For thee to-day,
And eyes that watched for thy glad awaking
Are turned away.
And voices low and tearful,
Are heard of Hope to sing;
But the voice in our heart so fearful,
Nor comfort nor hope can bring.

O Ireland! Ireland! thy life is closing
In the death of pain;
From thy broken heart is slowly oozing
The shower of crimson rain.
There thou art prostrate lying,
With the age of grief grown grey;
There thou art faintly sighing
The dream of the years away.

O Ireland! Ireland! it is still unriven,
That clanking chain;
Yet the countless wealth that for thee was given
Might ransom Cain.
In vain were they gifted and brave and truthful --
Our martyred host;
Thy cause is woe to the old, or youthful --
All, all are lost!

But another, and yet another,
O'er thy cold bier,
Oh, pallid and lifeless mother,
Are watching near;
They dream in their grief's wild madness
That thou wilt awake again --
They call thee with frenzied sadness,
Those heart-wrung and stricken men!

O Ireland! Ireland! dost hear them blending
That piercing dole,
Through the cloud-wrapt skies ascending,
Like the cry of a ruined soul.
They know not, O blessed Mary!
'Tis flowers o'er a corpse they fling;
They hear not the Miserere
The pitying angels sing.

O Ireland! Ireland! no streak of dawning
Is on the sky;
Still at our feet is the wide gulf yawning,
Where treasures on treasures lie.
Down through the deep, deep darkness
Victim on victim springs,
But the hour of its closing, never,
Or morning or midnight brings!





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