Will Watson, of the still unanchored art; What random gust, what overwhelming sea Has riven you apart From us, and from the flagship of the free?
You whose rich phrase, and vibrant, wont to be Trumpet and drum of onset and attack; Who, when of Abdul's ways you stooped to sing, Would give us just the dire, full-throated thing;
Now, when that much-damned man has got the sack, You change your tune, and make to pipe us back From honour, and the task of Liberty! Why argue, though? The plain position is
You are mistaken in your premises. You blind your sight with hot, emotional mists, Your way of thought is greatly too morose And moist and lachrymose,
For us, a muddled State's last realists. We Irish, to be brief, Are nowise grievers for the sake of grief. I pray you, dry those sympathetic tears,
They rust the will; and, Will, your nation's sin Is no dead shame, meet to be covered in, But a live fact that sears. Cancel the past? Soothly when it befalls
That ye amend the present, and are just, Go knock your head on Dublin Castle walls: Are they irrelevant, historic dust, Or a hard present-tense?
Search through the large print of the Statute Book For your much-valued Lords’ benevolence, And swept in vision westward, snatch a look At that dim land, where hunger claims to be
The honoured guest in every family; And the slain sun writes, in a scribble of shame, The word of utter Hell, Clanricarde's name. Go South and North;
Weep, if you will, along the dismal quays, Watching the unreturning ships go forth To fling our seed of strength and hope and worth In far, untributary ways.
And then the soul is something — at least in verse. Ours, poet, is to be a thing of straw, A stained, numb thing, that sits without the law Of yours, great master of the universe?
Most nobly planned! But, Watson, there's a text — Done in stout English in King James's reign — Which says that souls are not to be annexed, Not for the whole world's gain.
Cancel the past! Why, yes! We, too, have thought Of conflict crowned and drowned in olives of peace; But when Cuchullin and Ferdiadh fought There lacked no pride of warrior courtesies,
And so must this fight end. Bond, from the toil of hate we may not cease: Free, we are free to be your friend. And when you make your banquet, and we come,
Soldier with equal soldier must we sit, Closing a battle, not forgetting it. With not a name to hide, This mate and mother of valiant “rebels” dead
Must come with all her history on her head. We keep the past for pride: No deepest peace shall strike our poets dumb: No rawest squad of all Death's volunteers,
No rudest man who died To tear your flag down in the bitter years, But shall have praise, and three times thrice again, When at that table men shall drink with men.
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