ADVANCE!

God bade the sun with golden step sublime,
Advance!
He whispered in the listening ear of Time,
Advance!
He bade the guiding spirits of the stars,
With lightning speed, in silver shining cars,
Along the bright floor of his azure hall,
Advance!
Sun, stars, and time obey the voice, and all
Advance!

The river at its bubbling fountain cries,
Advance!
The clouds proclaim, like heralds through the skies,
Advance!
Throughout the world the mighty Master’s laws
Allow not one brief moment’s idle pause;
The earth is full of life, the swelling seeds
Advance!
And summer hours, like flowery harnessed steeds,
Advance!

To man’s most wondrous hand the same voice cried,
Advance!
Go clear the woods, and o’er the bounding tide
Advance!
Go draw the marble from its secret bed,
And make the cedar bend its giant head;
Let domes and columns through the wondering air
Advance!
The world, O man! is thine; but, wouldst thou share,
Advance!

Unto the soul of man the same voice spoke,
Advance!
From out the chaos, thunder-like, it broke,
“Advance!
Go track the comet in its wheeling race,
And drag the lightning from its hiding-place;
From out the night of ignorance and fears,
Advance!
For Love and Hope, borne by the coming years,
Advance!”

All heard, and some obeyed the great command,
Advance!
It passed along from listening land to land,
Advance!
The strong grew stronger, and the weak grew strong,
As passed the war-cry of the world along
Awake, ye nations, know your powers and rights
Advance!
Through hope and work to Freedom’s new delights,
Advance!

Knowledge came down and waved her steady torch,
Advance!
Sages proclaimed ’neath many a marble porch,
Advance!
As rapid lightning leaps from peak to peak,
The Gaul, the Goth, the Roman, and the Greek,
The painted Briton caught the wing`ed word,
Advance!
And earth grew young, and carolled as a bird,
Advance!

O Ireland! oh, my country, wilt thou not
Advance?
Wilt thou not share the world’s progressive lot?
Advance!
Must seasons change, and countless years roll on,
And thou remain a darksome Ajalon?
And never see the crescent moon of Hope
Advance?
’Tis time thine heart and eye had wider scope
Advance!

Dear brothers, wake! look up! be firm! be strong
Advance!
From out the starless night of fraud and wrong
Advance!
The chains have fall’n from off thy wasted hands,
And every man a seeming freedman stands;
But, ah! ’tis in the soul that freedom dwells,
Advance!
Proclaim that there thou wearest no manacles;
Advance!

Advance! thou must advance or perish now;
Advance!
Advance! Why live with wasted heart and brow?
Advance!
Advance! or sink at once into the grave;
Be bravely free or artfully a slave!
Why fret thy master, if thou must have one?
Advance!
Advance three steps, the glorious work is done;
Advance!

The first is courage ’tis a giant stride!
Advance!
With bounding step up Freedom’s rugged side
Advance!
Knowledge will lead thee to the dazzling heights,
tolerance will teach and guard thy brother’s rights.
Faint not! for thee a pitying Future waits
Advance!
Be wise, be just, with will as fixed as Fate’s,
Advance!

REMONSTRANCE

Bless the dear old verdant land,
Brother, wert thou born of it?
As thy shadow life doth stand,
Twining round its rosy band,
Did an Irish mother’s hand
Guide thee in the morn of it?
Did thy father’s soft command
Teach thee love or scorn of it?

Thou who tread’st its fertile breast,
Dost thou feel a glow for it?
Thou, of all its charms possest,
Living on its first and best,
Art thou but a thankless guest,
Or a traitor foe for it?
If thou lovest, where the test?
Wouldst thou strike a blow for it?

Has the past no goading sting
That can make thee rouse for it?
Does thy land’s reviving spring,
Full of buds and blossoming,
Fail to make thy cold heart cling,
Breathing lover’s vows for it?
With the circling ocean’s ring
Thou wert made a spouse for it!

Hast thou kept, as thou shouldst keep,
Thy affections warm for it,
Letting no cold feeling creep,
Like the ice breath o’er the deep,
Freezing to a stony sleep
Hopes the heart would form for it
Glories that like rainbows weep
Through the darkening storm for it?

What we seek is Nature’s right
Freedom and the aids of it;
Freedom for the mind’s strong flight
Seeking glorious shapes star-bright
Through the world’s intensest night,
When the sunshine fades of it!
Truth is one, and so is light,
Yet how many shades of it!

A mirror every heart doth wear,
For heavenly shapes to shine in it;
If dim the glass or dark the air,
That Truth, the beautiful and fair,
God’s glorious image, shines not there,
Or shines with nought divine in it:
A sightless lion in its lair,
The darkened soul must pine in it!

Son of this old, down-trodden land,
Then aid us in the fight for it;
We seek to make it great and grand,
Its shipless bays, its naked strand,
By canvas-swelling breezes fanned.
Oh! what a glorious sight for it!
The past expiring like a brand,
In morning’s rosy light for it!

Think that this dear old land is thine,
And thou a traitor slave of it;
Think how the Switzer leads his kine,
When pale the evening star doth shine,
His song has home in every line,
Freedom in every stave of it!
Think how the German loves his Rhine,
And worships every wave of it!

Our own dear land is bright as theirs,
But, oh! our hearts are cold for it;
Awake! we are not slaves but heirs;
Our fatherland requires our cares,
Our work with man, with God our prayers.
Spurn blood-stained Judas-gold for it,
Let us do all that honour dares
Be earnest, faithful, bold for it!

IRELAND’S VOW

Come! Liberty, come! we are ripe for thy coming
Come freshen the hearts where thy rival has trod
Come, richest and rarest! come, purest and fairest!
Come, daughter of Science! come, gift of the God!

Long, long have we sighed for thee, coyest of maidens
Long, long have we worshipped thee, queen of the brave!
Steadily sought for thee, readily fought for thee,
Purpled the scaffold and glutted the grave!

On went the fight through the cycle of ages,
Never our battle-cry ceasing the while;
Forward, ye valiant ones! onward, battalioned ones!
Strike for your Erin, your own darling isle!

Still in the ranks are we, struggling with eagerness,
Still in the battle for Freedom are we!
Words may avail in it swords if they fail in it,
What matters the weapon, if only we’re free?

Oh! we are pledged in the face of the universe,
Never to falter and never to swerve;
Toil for it! bleed for it! if there be need for it,
Stretch every sinew and strain every nerve!

Traitors and cowards our names shall be ever,
If for a moment we turn from the chase;
For ages exhibited, scoffed at, and gibbeted,
As emblems of all that was servile and base!

Irishmen! Irishmen! think what is Liberty,
Fountain of all that is valued and dear,
Peace and security, knowledge and purity,
Hope for hereafter and happiness here.

Nourish it, treasure it deep in your inner heart
Think of it ever by night and by day;
Pray for it! sigh for it! work for it! die for it!
What is this life and dear freedom away?

List! scarce a sound can be heard in our thoroughfares
Look! scarce a ship can be seen on our streams;
Heart-crushed and desolate, spell-bound, irresolute,
Ireland but lives in the bygone of dreams!

Irishmen! if we be true to our promises,
Nerving our souls for more fortunate hours,
Life’s choicest blessings, love’s fond caressings,
Peace, home, and happiness, all shall be ours!

A DREAM

I dreamt a dream, a dazzling dream, of a green isle far away,
Where the glowing West to the ocean’s breast calleth the dying day;
And that island green was as fair a scene as ever man’s eye did see,
With its chieftains bold and its temples old, and its homes and its
altars free!
No foreign foe did that green isle know, no stranger band it bore,
Save the merchant train from sunny Spain, and from Afric’s golden shore!
And the young man’s heart would fondly start, and the old man’s eye
would smile,
As their thoughts would roam o’er the ocean foam to that lone and “holy
isle!”

Years passed by, and the orient sky blazed with a newborn light,
And Bethlehem’s star shone bright afar o’er the lost world’s darksome
night;
And the diamond shrines from plundered mines, and the golden fanes of
Jove,
Melted away in the blaze of day at the simple spellword Love!
The light serene o’er that island green played with its saving beams,
And the fires of Baal waxed dim and pale like the stars in the morning
streams!
And ’twas joy to hear, in the bright air clear, from out each sunny
glade,
The tinkling bell, from the quiet cell, or the cloister’s tranquil
shade!

A cloud of night o’er that dream so bright soon with its dark wing came,
And the happy scene of that island green was lost in blood and shame;
For its kings unjust betrayed their trust, and its queens, though fair,
were frail,
And a robber band, from a stranger land, with their war-whoops filled
the gale;
A fatal spell on that green isle fell, a shadow of death and gloom
Passed withering o’er, from shore to shore, like the breath of the foul
simoom;
And each green hill’s side was crimson dyed, and each stream rolled red
and wild,
With the mingled blood of the brave and good of mother and maid and
child!

Dark was my dream, though many a gleam of hope through that black night
broke,
Like a star’s bright form through a whistling storm, or the moon through
a midnight oak!
And many a time, with its wings sublime, and its robes of saffron light,
Would the morning rise on the eastern skies, but to vanish again in
night!
For, in abject prayer, the people there still raised their fettered
hands,
When the sense of right and the power to smite are the spirit that
commands;
For those who would sneer at the mourner’s tear, and heed not the
suppliant’s sigh,
Would bow in awe to that first great law, a banded nation’s cry!

At length arose o’er that isle of woes a dawn with a steadier smile,
And in happy hour a voice of power awoke the slumbering isle!
And the people all obeyed the call of their chief’s unsceptred hand,
Vowing to raise, as in ancient days, the name of their own dear land!
My dream grew bright as the sunbeam’s light, as I watched that isle’s
career,
Through the varied scene and the joys serene of many a future year;
And, oh! what a thrill did my bosom fill as I gazed on a pillared pile,
Where a senate once more in power watched o’er the rights of that lone
green isle!

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Man of Ireland, heir of sorrow,
Wronged, insulted, scorned, oppressed,
Wilt thou never see that morrow
When thy weary heart may rest?
Lift thine eyes, thou outraged creature;
Nay, look up, for man thou art,
Man in form, and frame, and feature,
Why not act man’s god-like part?

Think, reflect, inquire, examine,
Is it for this God gave you birth
With the spectre look of famine,
Thus to creep along the earth?
Does this world contain no treasures
Fit for thee, as man, to wear?
Does this life abound in pleasures,
And thou askest not to share?

Look! the nations are awaking,
Every chain that bound them burst!
At the crystal fountains slaking
With parched lips their fever thirst!
Ignorance the demon, fleeing,
Leaves unlocked the fount they sip;
Wilt thou not, thou wretched being,
Stoop and cool thy burning lip?

History’s lessons, if thou’lt read ’em,
All proclaim this truth to thee:
Knowledge is the price of freedom,
Know thyself, and thou art free!
Know, O man! thy proud vocation,
Stand erect, with calm, clear brow
Happy! happy were our nation,
If thou hadst that knowledge now!

Know thy wretched, sad condition,
Know the ills that keep thee so;
Knowledge is the sole physician,
Thou wert healed if thou didst know!
Those who crush, and scorn, and slight thee,
Those to whom thou once wouldst kneel,
Were the foremost then to right thee,
Didst thou but feel as thou shouldst feel!

Not as beggars lowly bending,
Not in sighs, and groans, and tears,
But a voice of thunder sending
Through thy tyrant brother’s ears!
Tell him he is not thy master,
Tell him of man’s common lot,
Feel life has but one disaster,
To be a slave, and know it not!

Didst but prize what knowledge giveth,
Didst but know how blest is he
Who in Freedom’s presence liveth,
Thou wouldst die, or else be free!
Round about he looks in gladness,
Joys in heaven, and earth, and sea,
Scarcely heaves a sigh of sadness,
Save in thoughts of such as thee!

THE VOICE AND PEN

Oh! the orator’s voice is a mighty power,
As it echoes from shore to shore,
And the fearless pen has more sway o’er men
Than the murderous cannon’s roar!
What burst the chain far over the main,
And brighten’d the captive’s den?
’Twas the fearless pen and the voice of power,
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!
Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!

The tyrant knaves who deny man’s rights,
And the cowards who blanch with fear,
Exclaim with glee: “No arms have ye,
Nor cannon, nor sword, nor spear!
Your hills are ours with our forts and towers
We are masters of mount and glen!”
Tyrants, beware! for the arms we bear
Are the Voice and the fearless Pen!
Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!

Though your horsemen stand with their bridles in hand,
And your sentinels walk around!
Though your matches flare in the midnight air,
And your brazen trumpets sound!
Oh! the orator’s tongue shall be heard among
These listening warrior men;
And they’ll quickly say: “Why should we slay
Our friends of the Voice and Pen?”
Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!

When the Lord created the earth and sea,
The stars and the glorious sun,
The Godhead spoke, and the universe woke
And the mighty work was done!
Let a word be flung from the orator’s tongue,
Or a drop from the fearless pen,
And the chains accursed asunder burst
That fettered the minds of men!
Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!

Oh! these are the swords with which we fight,
The arms in which we trust,
Which no tyrant hand will dare to brand,
Which time cannot dim or rust!
When these we bore we triumphed before,
With these we’ll triumph again!
And the world will say no power can stay
The Voice and the fearless Pen!
Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the Voice and Pen!

“CEASE TO DO EVIL--LEARN TO DO WELL"

Oh! thou whom sacred duty hither calls,
Some glorious hours in freedom’s cause to dwell,
Read the mute lesson on thy prison walls,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well.”

If haply thou art one of genius vast,
Of generous heart, of mind sublime and grand,
Who all the spring-time of thy life has pass’d
Battling with tyrants for thy native land,
If thou hast spent thy summer as thy prime,
The serpent brood of bigotry to quell,
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

If thy great heart beat warmly in the cause
Of outraged man, whate’er his race might be,
If thou hast preached the Christian’s equal laws,
And stayed the lash beyond the Indian sea!
If at thy call a nation rose sublime,
If at thy voice seven million fetters fell,
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

If thou hast seen thy country’s quick decay,
And, like the prophet, raised thy saving hand,
And pointed out the only certain way
To stop the plague that ravaged o’er the land!
If thou hast summoned from an alien clime
Her banished senate here at home to dwell:
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

Or if, perchance, a younger man thou art,
Whose ardent soul in throbbings doth aspire,
Come weal, come woe, to play the patriot’s part
In the bright footsteps of thy glorious sire
If all the pleasures of life’s youthful time
Thou hast abandoned for the martyr’s cell,
Do thou repent thee of thy hideous crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

Or art thou one whom early science led
To walk with Newton through the immense of heaven,
Who soared with Milton, and with Mina bled,
And all thou hadst in freedom’s cause hast given?
Oh! fond enthusiast in the after time
Our children’s children of thy worth shall tell
England proclaims thy honesty a crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

Or art thou one whose strong and fearless pen
Roused the Young Isle, and bade it dry its tears,
And gathered round thee ardent, gifted men,
The hope of Ireland in the coming years?
Who dares in prose and heart-awakening rhyme,
Bright hopes to breathe and bitter truths to tell?
Oh! dangerous criminal, repent thy crime,
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

“Cease to do evil” ay! ye madmen, cease!
Cease to love Ireland cease to serve her well;
Make with her foes a foul and fatal peace,
And quick will ope your darkest, dreariest cell.
“Learn to do well” ay! learn to betray,
Learn to revile the land in which you dwell
England will bless you on your altered way
“Cease to do evil learn to do well!”

THE LIVING LAND

We have mourned and sighed for our buried pride,
We have given what nature gives,
A manly tear o’er a brother’s bier,
But now for the Land that lives!
He who passed too soon, in his glowing noon,
The hope of our youthful band,
From heaven’s blue wall doth seem to call
“Think, think of your Living Land!
I dwell serene in a happier scene,
Ye dwell in a Living Land!”

Yes! yes! dear shade, thou shalt be obeyed,
We must spend the hour that flies,
In no vain regret for the sun that has set,
But in hope for another to rise;
And though it delay with its guiding ray,
We must each, with his little brand,
Like sentinels light through the dark, dark night,
The steps of our Living Land.
She needeth our care in the chilling air
Our old, dear Living Land!

Yet our breasts will throb, and the tears will throng
To our eyes for many a day,
For an eagle in strength and a lark in song
Was the spirit that passed away.
Though his heart be still as a frozen rill,
And pulseless his glowing hand,
We must struggle the more for that old green shore
He was making a Living Land.
By him we have lost, at whatever the cost,
She must be a Living Land!

A Living Land, such as Nature plann’d,
When she hollowed our harbours deep,
When she bade the grain wave o’er the plain,
And the oak wave over the steep:
When she bade the tide roll deep and wide,
From its source to the ocean strand,
Oh! it was not to slaves she gave these waves,
But to sons of a Living Land!
Sons who have eyes and hearts to prize
The worth of a Living Land!

Oh! when shall we lose the hostile hues,
That have kept us so long apart?
Or cease from the strife, that is crushing the life
From out of our mother’s heart?
Could we lay aside our doubts and our pride,
And join in a common band,
One hour would see our country free,
A young and a Living Land!
With a nation’s heart and a nation’s part,
A free and a Living Land!

THE DEAD TRIBUNE

The awful shadow of a great man’s death
Falls on this land, so sad and dark before
Dark with the famine and the fever breath,
And mad dissensions knawing at its core.
Oh! let us hush foul discord’s maniac roar,
And make a mournful truce, however brief,
Like hostile armies when the day is o’er!
And thus devote the night-time of our grief
To tears and prayers for him, the great departed chief.

In “Genoa the Superb” O’Connell dies
That city of Columbus by the sea,
Beneath the canopy of azure skies,
As high and cloudless as his fame must be.
Is it mere chance or higher destiny
That brings these names together? One, the bold
Wanderer in ways that none had trod but he
The other, too, exploring paths untold;
One a new world would seek, and one would save the old!

With childlike incredulity we cry,
It cannot be that great career is run,
It cannot be but in the eastern sky
Again will blaze that mighty world-watch’d sun!
Ah! fond deceit, the east is dark and dun,
Death’s black, impervious cloud is on the skies;
Toll the deep bell, and fire the evening gun,
Let honest sorrow moisten manly eyes:
A glorious sun has set that never more shall rise!

Brothers, who struggle yet in Freedom’s van,
Where’er your forces o’er the world are spread,
The last great champion of the rights of man
The last great Tribune of the world is dead!
Join in our grief, and let our tears be shed
Without reserve or coldness on his bier;
Look on his life as on a map outspread
His fight for freedom freedom far and near
And if a speck should rise, oh! hide it with a tear!

To speak his praises little need have we
To tell the wonders wrought within these waves
Enough, so well he taught us to be free,
That even to him we could not kneel as slaves.
Oh! let our tears be fast-destroying graves,
Where doubt and difference may for ever lie,
Buried and hid as in sepulchral caves;
And let love’s fond and reverential eye
Alone behold the star new risen in the sky!

But can it be, that well-known form is stark?
Can it be true, that burning heart is chill?
Oh! can it be that twinkling eye is dark?
And that great thunder voice is hush’d and still?
Never again upon the famous hill
Will he preside as monarch of the land,
With myriad myriads subject to his will;
Never again shall raise that powerful hand,
To rouse, to warm, to check, to kindle, and command!

The twinkling eye, so full of changeful light,
Is dimmed and darkened in a dread eclipse;
The withering scowl, the smile so sunny bright,
Alike have faded from his voiceless lips.
The words of power, the mirthful, merry quips,
The mighty onslaught, and the quick reply,
The biting taunts that cut like stinging whips,
The homely truth, the lessons grave and high,
All, all are with the past, but cannot, shall not die!

A MYSTERY

They are dying! they are dying! where the golden corn is growing,
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!

God of Justice! God of Power!
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!

God of Mercy! must this last?
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?

Do our numbers multiply
But to perish and to die?
Is this all our destiny below,
That our bodies, as they rot,
May fertilise the spot
Where the harvests of the stranger grow?

If this be, indeed, our fate,
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 store-house of the stranger that we dare not call our own.

Kindly brothers of the West,
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 splendours of our empire and our crown!

Kindly brothers of the East,
Thou great tiara’d 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,

Turn here your wondering eyes,
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.

A fruitful teeming soil,
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.

Where they watch their flocks increase,
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.

’Tis for this they are dying where the golden corn is growing,
’Tis for this they are dying where the crowded herds are lowing,
’Tis 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.