They'll break the last link of the Saxon chain;
They'll give us back our lands again.
Then up ye and fight for your king and right—
Laws are vain, unless swords maintain;
If freedom you'd gain, be victors or slain.
Then rally, rally, Irishmen rally!
Fight "Now or Never,
Now and for Ever:"
Win freedom, and wear it, or die on the plain!
THE IRISH ARMS' BILL.
I.
My country, alas! we may blush for thee now,
The brand of the slave broadly stamp'd on thy brow!
Unarm'd must thy sons and thy daughters await
The Sassenagh's lust or the Sassenagh's hate.
II.
Through the length and the breadth of thy regions they roam;
Many huts and some halls may be there—but no home;
Rape and Murder cry out "let each door be unbarr'd!
Deliver your arms, and then—stand on your guard!"
III.
For England hath waken'd at length from her trance—
She might knuckle to Russia, and truckle to France—
And, licking the dust from America's feet,
Might vow she had ne'er tasted sugar so sweet.
IV.
She could leave her slain thousands, her captives, in pawn,
And Akhbar to lord it o'er Affghanistan,
And firing the village or rifling the ground
Of the poor murder'd peasant—slink off like a hound.
