RELEASED.
125
Irishmen! You who have kept the peace—
Look on these forms diseased and broken:
Believe, if you can, that their late release,
When their lives are sapped, is a good-will token.
Their hearts are the bait on England's hook;
For this are they dragged from her hopeless prison;
She reads her doom in the Nations' book—
She fears the day that has darkly risen;
She reaches her hand for Ireland's aid—
Ireland, scourged, contemned, derided;
She begs from the beggar her hate has made;
She seeks for the strength her guile divided.
She offers a bribe—ah, God above!
Behold the price of the desecration:
The hearts she has tortured for Irish love
She brings as a bribe to the Irish nation!
