Classic Poem

He spoke with one, a friend of college days,
Of Ireland and the Irish; land and folk
That Gordon Moore, albeit, like Michael's self,
His earliest breath was drawn on Irish soil,
Loved not, but almost hated; once he talked
After this fashion:
" Villiers, it's absurd
Of you to say you're half an Irishman —
At least that you have anything to do
With what they call the Irish people. Now,
I'll tell you what this Irish people is. —
A set of dirty, lazy priest-rid loons,
Who would not stir a foot to mend a fence
That any spancilled cow could overleap:
Who grub on half-boiled roots and buttermilk,
And swill the fiery stuff that makes 'em mad
To fight and break each other's empty heads.
They laugh, and lie, and bask i' the sun half nude,
Or cower up close upon their stinking peat,
And breed like rabbits. — Nay, 'twas thus they were,
Until those cursed demagogues came round
And pricked the vermin till they used their stings
To sting the harmless passers-by to death —
Nay, hang the metaphor, they shot them down,
The brutal cowards; shot the innocent
Good wives and children of the luckless men
Who owned the soil by immemorial right,
And those who dared to pay their lawful dues,
Or maimed them, body and mind; they fired the crops,
And burned the poor brute cattle in the byres,
Or houghed them; faugh! 'tis a disgusting theme!
And these you call a people! ay, maybe,
Of elemental times; a savage brood
The Vikings should have slaughtered long ago;
The English yet must tame; we'll tame them yet,
If we die for it."
Suddenly he stopped,
For Michael's eyes had flashed a look on him,
That dazed him into silence. Michael spoke,
The passion of his soul alive beneath
The calmness of his voice.
" I'll tell you, Moore,
If you will listen, what the Irish are.

" A folk that has not had a chance to be
A nation; overcome by a strong race,
Good cross-breed meetly fused of strong and strong,
Ere its own day had come for clan and clan
To be one people. What is for a land
Gripped ere it gain a nation's unity?
Gripped, but not held; they knew not how to hold!
A folk with all its own laws flung to ground,
Trampled beneath a strange law's heavy heel,
A better law, you say, but not its own:
Forbidden in vain by edicts writ in blood,
The fusion of race with race; for English veins
'Neath Irish skies ran only Irish blood,
And English there thought only Irish thought;
While English here hounded the Irishry
Down to the earth, savages unreclaimed,
Keltic or Norman, Irish all alike.
And all the land was watered with their blood, —
Their stript dead bodies lay upon the hills,
Which looked i' the distance, like a pasture-land
Whereon there swarmed a flock of night-lulled sheep.
They were but — savages — and when they slew
And burned in vengeance, they were savages
And we were always men and Englishmen!
Their mother-tongue was dumb for want of use;
Their priests, like very vermin, hunted down;
Their faith doomed to the pangs of martyrdom,
Without its glory; a cross without a crown;
Their tribelands seized and parcelled out amiss
To the unkind, unkinned, of other kith;
Each effort made to right their land against
The bitter winds of evil chance annulled;
Her industries made one mere ruin-heap;
Her acres gript by men who only cared
To wring their rent, unwitting what it cost,
And only saw the houses and the lands
He owned across Saint George's Channel, when
The time of year to beat the coverts came.

" " Dirty and thriftless! " Ay, it is the use
To call their peasants so! You know full well
When any among them seemed to thrive, the eyes
Of the good agent took a greedy glare,
As who should say, " Why if these cunning hinds
Have wherewithal to thatch their roofs anew,
And dress their womenfolk in comely gear,
And deck their window-frames with mignonette,
They must have some fair hoard i' the Savingsbank,
Were better in the pocket of my lord. "
It was not well to seem as if one throve;
So John and Pat and Mick abode in dirt,
And let the rotten fences be, and saw
The prashogue eat the earth, the poppies choke
The corn; and learned their lesson well — to sit
In apathy; that is a vice which wears
The look of that sweet virtue, patience' self!
But patience feeds the heart, and apathy
Drains the good lifeblood dry.
" They lie, you say:
I think that all men lie who are not free.
Serfs lie, and slaves, and men who are bound with those
Thrice deadly bonds which bind the coward in
Upon the heart, the man being left outside.
You like to have them lie when lying means
You shall not have to face some ugly truth:
You scorn to hear them lie, when lies of theirs
Muffle away some truth you'd care to see:
You laugh to hear them lie, when 'tis your mood
To be amused.
" You hate your native land,
Except for tickling your aesthetic sense
With her brave mountains, and her quick sea's breath,
And gentle undulating fields of green,
And steep magnificence of crags that meet
The wild winds' strength, and wrestle a fall, and win;
And here and there a maiden lovely-eyed,
With delicate blooming cheek, and raven hair;
Or barefoot urchin with the laughing face
You could not trust, and would not, if you could.
That's all you like in Ireland, save the sport
These farmers whom you curse have barred you from.
You are a scion of the dominant race,
And England is a good homeland to you;
And never a touch of Irish accent fouls
The limpid pureness of your faultless speech:
And when the famine comes, as come it does,
You stroll in languidly to some bazaar,
Where pretty women sell you buttonholes
For guineas, " to relieve the sore distress
Of the poor Irish: don't you know they live
In huts with walls of peat and roofs of sod,
Chimneyless, windowless; and the children go
The equals of the pigs! Alas, poor things,
They scarce have heard at all of God or Christ;
They are mere heathens; when their need is o'er
Of common food, it might be charity
To have them christianized. " You laugh, and take
Your guinea's worth, and pay, and chatter on
At leisure of the pretty stallkeeper.
You have heard me long enough, and I have done.
Ye gete no more of me but ye wol rede
The original that telleth al the cas!"

" And what's the original?"
" Ireland's history."

" But, Villiers, you're unjust; in the old time,
Some wrong was done to Ireland, there's no doubt,
But England long ago had seen that wrong,
And striven to make amends; and still she strives,
With all her might and main."
" I know it well,"
Said Michael, " and I would not be unjust;
But it may be that vision came too late,
And that amendment cannot now be done!
The bitterest punishment of punishments
To nations or to men is impotence
To mend a wrong they knew not when they did."