Britain, with shame, confess this land of mine
First taught thee human knowlege and divine[1];
My prelates and my students, sent from hence,
Made your sons converts both to God and sense:
Not like the pastors of thy ravenous breed,
Who come to fleece the flocks, and not to feed.
Wretched Ierne! with what grief I see
The fatal changes Time has made in thee!
The Christian rites I introduc’d in vain:
Lo! infidelity return'd again!
Freedom and virtue in thy sons I found,
Who now in vice and slavery are drown'd.
By faith and prayer, this crosier in my hand,
I drove the venom'd serpent from thy land:
The shepherd in his bower might sleep or sing[2],
Nor dread the adder's tooth, nor scorpion's sting.
With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains,
Omens, the types of thy impending chains,
I sent the magpie from the British soil,
With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil;
To din thine ears with unharmonious clack,
And haunt thy holy walls in white and black.
What else are those thou seest in bishop's geer,
Who crop the nurseries of learning here;
- ↑ St. Patrick arrived in Ireland in the year 431, and completed the conversion of the natives, which had been begun by Palladius and others. And, as bishop Nicholson observes, Ireland soon became the fountain of learning, to which all the Western Christians, as well as the English, had recourse, not only for instructions in the principles of religion, but in all sorts of literature, viz. legendi et scholasticæ eruditionis gratiâ.
- ↑ There are no snakes, vipers, or toads, in Ireland; and even frogs were not known here until about the year 1700. The magpies came a short time before; and the Norway rats since.
