Poems (Elgee, 1907)/Have we done well for Ireland

by Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee

HAVE WE DONE WELL FOR IRELAND?

COUNTRY, writhing in thy chain With fierce, wild efforts to be free,Not seeing that with every strain The bonds close firmer over thee;Or grasping blindly in thy hateThe temple pillars of the State,To hurl them down on friend and foe,Crushed in one common overthrow—Can none of all thy Poet bandPreach nobler aims, loved Ireland?

As David drove with magic chords The Evil Spirit back to night;As Moses by his mighty words Led Egypt's bondmen up to light;Hast thou no Poet, strong to calmThy troubled soul with holy psalm?Or trusted Chief, who, safely onAcross the fatal Rubicon,Could lead thee with pure heart and handTo Freedom—my own Ireland?

By those doomed men, in dull despair Slow wasting in a dungeon's gloom;By all youth's fiery heart can dare Quenched in the prison's living tomb—By the corroding felon chain,That tortures with Promethean painOf vultures gnawing at the coreOf their lost lives for evermore—I ask you, People of our Land,Have ye done well for Ireland?

By History traced on dungeon walls, By scaffolds, chains, and exiles' tears,Slow marking, as the shadow falls, The mournful sequence of the years; By genius crushed and progress barred,By noble aspirations marred,Till with a smouldering fire's lifeThey burn in deadly hate and strife—I ask you, Rulers of our Land,Have ye done well for Ireland?

O Men! these men are brothers too, Tho' frenzied by a fatal dream,Their living souls were meant to do Some noble work in God's great scheme,Perchance to hew down, branch and root,The tree that bore such bitter fruit;But, left unguided in the Right,They grope out blindly in the nightOf their dark passions; striking downTheir Country's proud hopes with their own.

But now, ye say, the Land hath rest— Aye, with the death weights on her eyes;And fettered arms across her breast, And mail'd hands stifling down her cries.So rests a corpse within the graveO'er which the charnal grasses wave.Oh, better far some kindly wordTo stay the vengeance-lifted sword,Or Love, with queenly, outstretched hand,To soothe thee—fated Ireland!