48
IRELAND.
Queen in the right of thy courage ! manacled, scourged, defamed,
Thy voice in the teeth of the bayonets the right of a race proclaimed.
"Bah!" they sneered from their battlements, "her people cannot unite;
They are sands of the sea, that break before the rush of our ordered might!"
And wherever the flag of the pirate flew, the English slur was heard,
And the shallow of soul re-echoed the boast of the taunting word.
But we—O sun, that of old was our god, we look in thy face to-day.
As our Druids who prayed in the ancient time, and with them we proudly say:
"We have wronged no race, we have robbed no land, we have never oppressed the weak!"
And this in the face of Heaven is the nobler thing to speak.
