A Poem Written in Time of Trouble by an Irish Priest Who Had Taken Orders in France

  My thoughts, my grief! are without
    strength
  My spirit is journeying towards
    death
  My eyes are as a frozen sea
  My tears my daily food;
  There is nothing in life but only misery.
  My poor heart is torn
  And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
  Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.

  Misfortune has come upon us all together
  The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong
  The great lord by whom hundreds were main-
    tained
  The powerful strong man, and the man that
    holds the plough;
  And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every
    man.

  Our feasts are without any voice of priests
  And none at them but women lamenting
  Tearing their hair with troubled minds
  Keening miserably after the Fenians.

  The pipes of our organs are broken
  Our harps have lost their strings that were
    tuned
  That might have made the great lamentations of
    Ireland.
  Until the strong men come back across the sea
  There is no help for us but bitter crying,
  Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.

  I do not know of anything under the sky
  That is friendly or favourable to the Gael

  But only the sea that our need brings us to,
  Or the wind that blows to the harbour
  The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;
  And there is reason that these are reconciled
    with us,
  For we increase the sea with our tears
  And the wandering wind with our sighs.