1916

The Mother Paidrig Pearse

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow - And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.

I See His Blood Upon The Rose Joesph Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice-and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

The Foggy Dew Cannon Charles oNeil

As down the glen one Easter morn to a
city fair rode I
There armed lines of marching men in
squadrons passed me by
No fife did hum nor battle drum did
sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus bell oer the Liffey swell
rang out through the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin town
they hung out the f lag of war
Twas better to die neath an Irish sky
than at Suvla or Sedd El Bahr
And from the plains of Royal Meath
strong men came hurrying through
While Britannias Huns, with their
long-range guns sailed in through the
foggy dew
Twas Britannia bade our Wild Geese go
that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Suvlas
waves or the shore of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearses side or
fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the
Fenians sleep neath the shroud of the
foggy dew
But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell
rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in
the springing of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze,
at those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight that freedoms light
might shine through the foggy dew
Ah, back through the glen I rode again
and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men
whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and
Id kneel and pray for you,

For slavery f led, O glorious dead,

When you fell in the foggy dew

The Wayfarer Paidrig Pearse

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

Easter, 1916 W B Yeats

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That womans days were spent

In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his
turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live;
The stones in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heavens part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Connolly

Liam McGowan

The man was all shot through that came today

Into the barrack square;
A soldier I - I am not proud to say
We killed him there;
They brought him from the prison hospital;
To see him in that chair
I thought his smile would far more quickly call
A man to prayer.
Maybe we cannot understand this thing
That makes these rebels die;
And yet all things love freedom - and the Spring
Clear in the sky;
I think I would not do this deed again
For all that I hold by;
Gaze down my rifle at his breast - but then
A soldier I.
They say that he was kindly - different too,
Apart from all the rest;
A lover of the poor; and all shot through,
His wounds ill drest,
He came before us, faced us like a man,
He knew a deeper pain
Than blows or bullets - ere the world began;
Died he in vain?
Ready - present; And he just smiling - God!

I felt my rifle shake

His wounds were opened out and round that chair
Was one red lake;
I swear his lips said 'Fire!' when all was still
Before my rifle spat
That cursed lead - and I was picked to kill
A man like that!

'Wishes For My Son, Born On St Cecilia's Day, 1912'

Thomas Mc Donagh
Now,my son, is life for you,
And I wish you joy of it,Joy of power in all you do,
Deeper passion, better wit
Than I had who had enough,
Quicker life and length thereof,
More of every gift but love.
Love I have beyond all men,
Love that now you share with meWhat have I to wish you then
But that you be good and free,
And that God to you may give
Grace in stronger days to live?
For I wish you more than I
Ever knew of glorious deed,
Though no rapture passed me by
That an eager heart could heed,
Though I followed heights and sought
Things the sequel never brought.
Wild and perilous holy things
Flaming with a martyr's blood,
And the joy that laughs and sings
Where a foe must be withstood,
Joy of headlong happy chance
Leading on the battle dance.
But I found no enemy,
No man in a world of wrong,
That Christ's word of charity

Did not render clean and strongWho was I to judge my kind,

Blindest groper of the blind?
God to you may give the sight
And the clear, undoubting strength
Wars to knit for single right,
Freedom's war to knit at length,
And to win through wrath and strife,
To the sequel of my life.
But for you, so small and young,
Born on Saint Cecilia's Day,
I in more harmonious song
Now for nearer joys should praySimpler joys: the natural growth
Of your childhood and your youth,
Courage, innocence, and truth:
These for you, so small and young,
In your hand and heart and tongue.

Comrades Eva Gore Booth

The peaceful night that round me flows,
Breaks through your iron prison doors,
Free through the world your spirit goes,
Forbidden hands are clasping yours.
The wind is our confederate,
The night has left her doors ajar,
We meet beyond earths barred gate,
Where all the worlds wild Rebels are.

Sixteen Dead Men W B Yeats

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?
You say that we should still the land
Till Germanys overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonaghs bony thumb?
How could you dream theyd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Imperial Measure Vona Groarke

The kitchens of the Metropole and Imperial hotels yielded up to the Irish Republic
their armory of fillet, brisket, flank. Though destined for more palatable tongues,
it was pressed to service in an Irish stew and served on fine bone china
with bread that turned to powder in their mouths. Brioche, artichokes, tomatoes
tasted for the first time: staunch and sweet on Monday, but by Thursday,
they had overstretched to spill their livid plenitude on the fires of Sackville Street.
A cow and her two calves were commandeered. One calf was killed,
its harnessed blood clotting the morning like news that wasnt welcome
when, eventually, it came. The women managed the blood into black puddings
washed down with milk from the cow in the yard who smelt smoke on the wind

and fire on the skin of her calf. Whose fear they took for loss and fretted with her
until daylight crept between crossfire and the sights of Marrowbone Lane.
Brownies, Simnel cake, biscuits slumped under royal icing. clairs with their cream
already turned. Crackers, tonnes of them: the floor of Jacobs studded with crumbs,
so every footfall was a recoil from a gunshot across town, and the flakes
a constant needling in mouths already seared by the one drink a gross
or two of cooking chocolate, stewed and taken without sweetener or milk.
Its skin was riven every time the ladle dipped but, just as quickly, it seized up again.
Nellie Gifford magicked oatmeal and a half-crowned loaf to make porridge
in a grate in the College of Surgeons where drawings of field surgery
had spilled from Ypres to drench in wounds the whitewashed walls
of the lecture hall. When the porridge gave out, there was rice:
a biscuit-tin of it for fourteen men, a ladleful each that scarcely knocked
the corners off their undiminished appetites; their vast, undaunted thirst.
The sacks of flour ballasting the garrison gave up their downy protest under fire.
It might have been a fall of Easter snow sent to muffle the rifles or to deaden the aim.
Every blow was a flurry that thickened the air of Bolands Mill, so breath
was ghosted by its own white consequence. The mens clothes were talced with it,
as though they were newborns, palmed and swathed, their foreheads kissed,
their grip unclenched, their fists and arms first blessed and, then, made much of.
The cellars of the Four Courts were intact at the surrender, but the hock
had been agitated, the Reisling set astir. For years, the wines were sullied
with a leaden aftertaste, although the champagne had as full a throat as ever,
and the spirits kept their heady confidence, for all the stockpiled bottles
had chimed with every hit, and the calculating scales above it all
had had the measure of nothing, or nothing if not smoke, and then wildfire.
* From Flight (2002) by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press.