Part 8

’Tis o’er; the victory is ours; And though yon darling flag May float above our castle towers A torn and tattered rag, ’Tis still our own; and every fold Preserved us from the strife, Each shred around that flag-staff rolled Unpierced by ball or knife, Is worth a mine of virgin gold-- Aye, worth a hero’s life.

From slimy cell and dungeon damp Bring forth our prisoned men; Gather, ye braves, from every camp, To cheer them home again. What though to-day they did not bleed To share our victory, We reap the harvest of their seed, So victors still they be; From faction they our people freed, And now our land is free.

* * * * *

Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake The city with your strain; Your loudest music cannot break The felon’s rest again. His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone, Nor left a single ray, For all that but this moment shone Retreat before the day; But that last, loving, pitying one Has borne his soul away.

“Died in his cell”--and nothing more; ’Twas all his comrades heard; But of the dream he had before He died,--oh, not a word! They found him on the coarse straw bed, A smile upon his face, And, “Number 28 found dead,” Was whispered round the place; And the jail doctor shook his head And wondered at the case!

THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]

An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event, ’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple, There is not much fun in recovering rent Where the Land League has hold of the people; But upheaval of earth Is good reason for mirth, ’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border, Compared to a seat Where the Commoners meet When Mulligan rises to order.

A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain, Catarrhic attacks are not charming, There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming. Should close diagnosis Reveal your probocis To be of your weakness recorder, You might foolishly curse; But it’s very much worse When Mulligan rises to order.

The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell, A cats’ chorus in conference meeting, Are music compared to the agonized yell Of rage and derision, his greeting; You go home to your bed With a pain in your head, By your pillow stands nightmare a warder; Your sleep is a blight, Your comfort takes flight, Your breathing is tight, You scratch and you bite, Or you wake with affright As you dream through the night That Mulligan rises to order!

ERIN MACHREE (1798).

The sun had gone down in a halo of glory, And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory, The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay. Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping, And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping, We gathered together in sorrow and weeping For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!

From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled, Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze; We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled, And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze. Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us, While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!

But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water, Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains; When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter, ’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains! Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying, The wild winds a requiem over us sighing, Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!

Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast; Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow-- That morning must dawn on our island at last. Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them; Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!

THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.

When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the combined detective forces.

Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun, cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.

She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions, in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces. Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase to that winning post, the door.

Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.

Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell, but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any postal manual.

Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type. London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to Love’s young dream in the entire A division.

He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.

In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.

His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.

No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd, Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2 guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”

The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.

By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung, but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.

He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!” he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms, mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes, water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no response.

“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing, of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely, and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”

And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in the shape of tears.

The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’ figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.

This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric light.

BALFOUR’S WISH.

When members have taken their usual places, And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read, The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces, Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head; And as, one by one, question follows on question, Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea, In agony mental that spoils his digestion, But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”

“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder, “How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?” “Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder, “The average size of potatoes in Clare?” A third seeks a legal opinion, without Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee, And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout, While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.

Affairs of the person, affairs of the State, Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar, What should be a sub-constable’s average weight? Does he ever indulge in the national car? Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle? Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree? And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle, “Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”

OUR CAUSE.

Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains, Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains, Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage, Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page, Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume, With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom: Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause, For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!

Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears, And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers, And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords, They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes. The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by, No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky, But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws, The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.

It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight; It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate; O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore. Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones, And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones; But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws, And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.

What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat, That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat, That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath, Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death? ’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete, No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet; Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause, And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!

SERVED HIM RIGHT.

[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”--_London Graphic._]

I have no tears for brother Pat, Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory, On the Egyptian desert, that He might assist in England’s glory. The foes he fought were not his own, Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided; Then why should I his fate bemoan? O brother, faithless and degraded!

He saw how Saxon laws at home Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers, Why should he cross the ocean’s foam To place that hated yoke on others? The Arabs slew him in a fight For all by brave and free men cherished-- Ay, for the cause of truth and right, For which his kith and kin had perished.

No Arab chief in Ninety-eight Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman; They lent no spears to swell the hate Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman. But those who wrapt our homes in flame And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle-- It was for them--oh, burning shame! My brother gave his life in battle.

Sure, every memory of late Must from his wretched heart have vanished; Our hills and valleys desolate, Our ruined homes, our people banished. And yet, God knows, he learned in youth The gloomy story of his sireland-- Drank in at mother’s knees the truth That England is the scourge of Ireland.

I cannot weep for brother Pat-- I hate the hellish cause he died for; False traitor to the freedom that His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for; E’en when in tearful dreams I see The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him, My grief is changed to anger. He Was treacherous to the land that bore him!

RAPPAREE SONG.

Come up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on, And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon; The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale, And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale. Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below, And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe: Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.

They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky; Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown, And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own; Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows-- They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows; And because we won’t perish while feasting they be, Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!

We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand, We’re traitors because we are true to our land, And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel! They have hunted us down now for many a day; To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they; For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear, Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.

TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.

You tendered us when famine came The pity of a thought, Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame And hearts and souls you’d bought. Time’s wheel turns round--you’ve lost your place, And right into your tyrant face, Your jibes and sneers Of many years At victims’ tears Are thrown, And in God’s name, Our hearts aflame, To-day we claim Our own!

Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves, Muscle and brain we wrought. Toiled, starved, and died--scarce for ourselves The crumbs of Lazarus sought; And when ye flung us out a crust, Our faces grovelling in the dust, We gave ye thanks-- No prize, all blanks In our poor ranks Was known; But now, thank God, We’ve spurned your rod, And claim this sod Our own!

We lift our faces to the sky Where once our heads were bowed, We breathe no more a timid sigh, But speak our thoughts aloud. From dizzy hill and peaceful plain Our voices join in this refrain: The seeds we sow, The crops we grow, The fields we mow, Alone, Without your aid In cash or spade At last are made Our own!

BALFOUR REJOICES.

So the toil of the session is over, My woes for a period cease, And hey for a journey by Dover To latitudes promising peace; Away to recuperate vigor-- Away from obstruction’s mad spell-- Away from the questions of Biggar-- Away from the taunts of Parnell.

No more my poor head shall be aching With night after night of debate-- No more shall my soul feel a quaking At bald, irrepressible prate. And, though ocean attack me with rigor, While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar, And getting away from Parnell.

No more to be quizzed on each capture Of priest or of peasant by night-- I could dance the can-can in my rapture, Or stand on my head with delight. Play the banjo and sing like a nigger, Or like a wild Irishman yell Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar, And don’t give--ahem--for Parnell!