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I walked through Ballinderry in the Spring-time,
  When the bud was on the tree;
And I said, in every fresh-ploughed field beholding
  The sowers striding free,
Scattering broad cast forth the corn in golden plenty
  On the quick seed-clasping soil,
Even such, this day, among the fresh-stirred hearts of Erin,
  Thomas Davis is thy toil!

I sat by Ballyshannon in the summer,
  And saw the salmon leap;
And I sad, as I beheld the gallant creatures
  Spring glittering from the deep,
Through the spray, and through the prone heaps striving onward
  To the calm clear streams above,
So seekest thou thy native founts of freedom, Thomas Davis,
  In thy brightness of strength and love!

I stood on Derrybawn in the Autumn,
  And I heard the eagle call,
With a clangorous cry of wrath and lamentation
  That filled the wide mountain hall,
O'er the bare deserted place of his plundered eyrie;
  And I said, as he screamed and soared,
So callest thou, thou wrathful-soaring Thomas Davis,
  For a nation's rights restored!

And, alas!  to think but now, and thou art lying,
  Dear Davis, dead at thy mother's knee;
And I, no mother near, on my own sick-bed,
  That face on earth shall never see:
I may lie and try to feel that I am not dreaming,
  I may lie and try to say, "Thy will be done"--
But a hundred such as I will never comfort Erin
  For the loss of the noble son!

Young husbandman of Erin's fruitful seed-time,
  In the fresh track of danger's plough!
Who will walk the heavy, toilsome, perilous furrow,
  Girt with freedom's seed-sheets now?
Who will banish with the wholesome crop of knowledge
  The flaunting weed and the bitter thorn,
Now that thou thyself art but a seed for hopeful planting
  Against the resurrection morn?

Young salmon of the flood-tide of freedom
  That swells round Erin's shore!
Thou wilt leap against their loud oppressive torrent
  Of bigotry and hate no more:
Drawn downward by their prone material instinct,
  Let them thunder on their rocks and foam--
Thou hast leapt, aspiring soul, to founts beyond their raging,
  Where troubled waters never come!

But my trust is strong in God, who made us brothers,
  That He will not suffer those right hands
Which thou hast joined in holier rites than wedlock,
  To draw opposing brands.
Oh, many a tuneful tongue that thou mad'st vocal
  Would lie cold and silent then;
And songless long once more, should often-widowed Erin
  Mourn the loss of her brave young men.

Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise,
  'Tis on you my hopes are set,
In manliness, in kindliness, in justice,
  To make Erin a nation yet:
Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing,
  In union or in severance, free and strong--
And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis
  Let the greater praise belong.

1845.

[This poem is taken from a biographical and critical article on Thomas Davis in the Dublin University Magazine for February, 1847, vol. xxix, p. 198, "Our Portrait Gallery, No. xlii., Thomas Davis."  The article, which is an elaborate estimate of the effects of Davis's career, concludes thus:--"We give expression to the feelings which his loss occasioned in the language, as expressed at the time, of one of his friends, who has adopted the peculiar Irish taste in his composition, which it was poor Davis's delight to inculcate, and which although it invites to a composition that may seem rugged to English eyes, possesses a regular melody for Irish ears, and, we believe, comes home to the Irish heart."--ED. 1869.]

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