John Boyle O'Reilly

Released’€”january, 1878

On the 5th of January,!878, three of the Irish political prisoners, who had been confined since!866, were set at liberty. The released men were received by their fellow-countrymen in London. ‘They are well,’ said the report, ‘ but they look prematurely old.’

THEY are free at last! They can face the sun;
Their hearts now throb with the world’s pulsation;
Their prisons are open’€”their night is done;
’Tis England’s mercy and reparation!

The years of their doom have slowly sped’€”
Their limbs are withered’€”their ties are riven;
Their children are scattered, their friends are dead’€”
But the prisons are open’€”the 'crime’ forgiven.

God! what a threshold they stand upon:
The world has passed on while they were buried;
In the glare of the sun they walk alone
On the grass-grown track where the crowd has hurried.

Haggard and broken and seared with pain,
They seek the remembered friends and places:
Men shuddering turn, and gaze again
At the deep-drawn lines on their altered faces.

What do they read on the pallid page?
What is the tale of these woeful letters?
A lesson as old as their country’s age,
Of a love that is stronger than stripes and fetters.

In the blood of the slain some dip their blade,
And swear by the stain the foe to follow:
But a deadlier oath might here be made,
On the wasted bodies and faces hollow.

Irishmen! You who have kept the peace’€”
Look on these forms diseased and broken:
Believe, if you can, that their late release,
When their lives are sapped, is a good-will token.

Their hearts are the bait on England’s hook;
For this are they dragged from her hopeless prison;
She reads her doom in the Nation’s book’€”
She fears the day that has darkly risen;

She reaches her hand for Ireland’s aid’€”
Ireland, scourged, contemned, derided;
She begs from the beggar her hate has made;
She seeks for the strength her guile divided.

She offers a bribe’€”ah, God above!
Behold the price of the desecration:
The hearts she has tortured for Irish love
She brings as a bribe to the Irish nation!

O, blind and cruel! She fills her cup
With conquest and pride, till its red wine splashes:
But shrieks at the draught as she drinks it up’€”
Her wine has been turned to blood and ashes.

We know her’€”our Sister! Come on the storm!
God send it soon and sudden upon her:
The race she has shattered and sought to deform
Shall laugh as she drinks the black dishonor.

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