writhes and dies not in its rotten root:
Two things made flesh, the visible desire
To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, {87a}
Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot
Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit,
The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre!
A heart with generous virtues run to seed
In vices making all a jumbled creed:
A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame,
But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed--
If thou we've known of late, art still the same,
What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?

Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees
Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong,
And sky and earth and sea burst into song: {87b}
Once on thine eyes the light of agonies
Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. {87c}
But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long
The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong.
And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? {87d}
O you who sang the Italian smoke above,--
Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band
Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love
Of these poor souls none have the keeping of--
It is your hand--it is your pandar hand
Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!

TO AN UNIONIST.

"If you only knew
How gladly I've given it
All these years--
The light of mine eyes,
The heat of my lips,
Mine agonies,
My yearning tears,
My blood that drips,
My brain that sears:
If you only knew
How gladly I've given it
All these years--
My hope and my youth,
My manhood, my Art,
My passion, my truth,
My mind and my heart:

"O my brother, you would not say,
What have you to do with me?
You would not, would not turn away
Doubtingly and bitterly.

"If you only knew
How little I cared for
These other things--
The delicate speech,
The high demand
Of each from each,
The imaginings
Of Love's Holy Land:
If you only knew
How little I cared for
These other things--
The wide clear view
Over peoples and times,
The search in the new
Entrancing climes,
Science's wings
And Art's sweet chimes:

"O my brother, if you only knew
What to me in these things is understood,
As it seems to me it would seem to you,
What was good for the Cause was surely good:

"O my brother,