l, rage down as a ravening
flood,
To slay and to flay of their shining apparel their brethren whom
shipwreck spares;
Such faith and such mercy, such love and such manhood, such hands
and such hearts are theirs.
Short shrift to her foes gives England, but shorter doth Ireland to
friends; and worse
Fare they that came with a blessing on treason than they that come
with a curse.
Hacked, harried, and mangled of axes and skenes, three thousand
naked and dead
Bear witness of Catholic Ireland, what sons of what sires at her
breasts are bred.
Winds are pitiful, waves are merciful, tempest and storm are kind:
The waters that smite may spare, and the thunder is deaf, and the
lightning is blind:
Of these perchance at his need may a man, though they know it not,
yet find grace;
But grace, if another be hardened against him, he gets not at this
man's face.
For his ear that hears and his eye that sees the wreck and the wail
of men,
And his heart that relents not within him, but hungers, are like as
the wolf's in his den.
Worthy are these to worship their master, the murderous Lord of
lies,
Who hath given to the pontiff his servant the keys of the pit and
the keys of the skies.
Wild famine and red-shod rapine are cruel, and bitter with blood
are their feasts;
But fiercer than famine and redder than rapine the hands and the
hearts of priests.
God, God bade these to the battle; and here, on a land by his
servants trod,
They perish, a lordly blood-offering, subdued by the hands of the
servants of God.
These also were fed of his priests with faith, with the milk of his
word and the wine;
These too are fulfilled with the spirit of darkness that guided
their quest divine.
And here, cast up from the ravening sea on the mild land's merciful
breast,
This comfort they find of their fellows in worship; this guerdon is
theirs of their quest.
Death was captain, and doom was pilot, and darkness the chart of
their way;
Night and hell had in charge and in keeping the host of the foes of
day.
Invincible, vanquished, impregnable, shattered, a sign to her foes