Ireland's OWN: Poetry and Prose

Honour the Brave
—by Miles O'Reilly

Honour the brave who battle still
For Irish right in English lands;
No rule except the quenchless will,
No power save in their naked hands;
Who waged by day and waged by night,
In groups of three or bands of ten,
Our savage, undespairing fight
Against two hundred thousand men.

No pomp of war their eyes to blind,
No blare of music as they go,
With just such weapons as they find,
In desperate onset on the foe.
They seize the pike, the torch, the scythe —
Unequal contest — but what then?
With steadfast eyes and spirits blithe
They face two hundred thousand men.

The jails are yawning through the land,
The scaffold's fatal click is heard,
But still moves on the scanty band,
By jail and scaffold undeterred.
A moment's pause to wail the last
Who fell in freedom's fight and then,
With teeth firm set, and breathing fast,
They face two hundred thousand men.

Obscure, unmarked, with none to praise
Their fealty to a trampled land;
Yet never Knight in Arthur's days
For desperate cause made firmer stand.
They wage no public war, 'tis true;
They strike and fly, and strike — what then?
'Tis only thus the faithful few
Can front two hundred thousand men.

You call them ignorant, rash and wild;
But who can tell how patriots feel
With centuries of torment piled
Above the land to which they kneel?
And who has made them what we find —
Like tigers lurking in their den,
And breaking forth with fury blind
To beard two hundred thousand men?

Who made their lives so hard to bear
They care not how their lives are lost?
Their land a symbol of despair —
A wreck on ruin's ocean tossed.
We, happier here, may carp and sneer,
And judge them harshly — but what then?
No gloves for those, who have as foes
To face two hundred thousand men.

Honour the brave! let England rave
Against them as a savage band;
We know their foes, we know their woes;
And hail them as a hero band.
With iron will they battle still,
In groups of three of files of ten,
Nor care we by what savage skill
They fight two hundred thousand men.