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Title: The Celtic Soul Cry
Author: Edward Doyle [
More Titles by Doyle]
I
O Freedom! Have I ever been untrue?
When, to thy moan of hunger anywhere,
Have I been deaf? Was I not quick to share
My little, nay, give all! for oh! I knew
Thy beauty, and my love such passion grew
At thy distresses,--What would I not dare!
So, though the bellow, like a grizzly bear,
Reared up before me, on to thee I flew.
O Freedom! Is thy beauty without heart,
Or sense of justice? Unto whom art thou
Indebted for thine arm, encircling now
The world, sun-like, more than to me? My part
I glory in, for I have kept my vow.
I hold thee now to thine, if true thou art.
II
Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive,
Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace
Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place?
With signs thou hadst not many days to live,
I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give
To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there
Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare
Without thee. I give love for love, believe".
Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me.
Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone!
What do I ask for? Only Erin's own,
That which God gave her, and, if true it be,
Thou art the minister of justice grown,
Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree.
III
What! Why bemoan one island in the sea,
When I can range like mountains, or, the sun,
Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run
To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee?
Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily,
Is, thou and I eternally are one;
And this god-passion which no power can stun,
I owe to her, who gave her soul to me.
Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift
On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef,
And know she breathes with her sublime belief,
It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift
Her saintly features, and dry them of grief,
Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift.
IV
America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold,
Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand
From out the heavens, a-flash across the land
In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould
To reaps of ripeness,--that mine eyes behold,
Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand
To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand,
Forming for man a new world for the old.
'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth
The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee
With God's compassion for humanity,--
That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth
Bears palms and chants hosannas--what! shall she,
The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth?
[The end]
Edward Doyle's poem: Celtic Soul Cry
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