Let's drink to the famed tenth of August, With pikes, and with shouts, and with torches. Marched onward our dusty battalions, And we girt the tall castle of Louis, A million of tatterdemalions ! We stormed the fair gardens where towered Ah, shame on him, craven and coward, With the crown of his sires on his head, His nobles and knights by his side, At the foot of his ancestors' palace, 'Twere easy, methinks, to have died. But no; when we burst through his barriers, 'Mid heaps of the dying and dead, In vain through the chambers we sought him, He had turned like a craven and fled. The drummer now bared his old breast, "This came when I followed bold Kleber, 'Twas shot by a Mameluke gun; And this from an Austrian sabre, When the field of Marengo was won. 'My forehead has many deep furrows, But this is the deepest of all; A Brunswicker made it at Jena, Beside the fair river of Saal. This cross, 'twas the Emperor gave it (God bless him,) it covers a blow, I had it at Austerlitz fight, As I beat on my drum in the snow." THOMAS DAVIS. 1814-1845 THE BATTLE-EVE OF THE BRIGADE (From the "Nation") The mess-tent is full, and the glasses are set, And the gallant Count Thomond is president yet; The vet'ran arose like an uplifted lance, Crying, "Comrades, a health to the monarch of France!' With bumpers and cheers they have done as he bade, For King Louis is loved by the Irish Brigade. A health to King James," and they bent as they quaffed ; "Here's to George the Elector!" and fiercely they laughed ; "Good luck to the girls we wooed long ago, Where Sionainn, and Bearbha, and Abhaindubh flow; "God prosper Old Ireland!" you'd think them afraid, So pale grew the chiefs of the Irish Brigade. 'But surely, that light cannot come from our lamp And that noise-are they all getting drunk in the camp?' [come, Hurrah! boys, the morning of battle is And the generale's beating on many a drum.” So they rush from the revel to join the parade, For the van is the right of the Irish Brigade. They fought as they revelled, fast, fiery, and true, And, though victors, they left on the field not a few ; And they who survived fought and drank as of yore, But the land of their hearts' hope they never saw more; For in far, foreign fields from Dunkirk to [gade. Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Bri Belgrade F. W. FABER. 1814-1863 PREFACE Blame not my verse if echoes of church bells With every change of thought or dream are twining, Fetching a murmuring sameness from the fells And lakes and rivers with their inland shining. And marvel not in these loose drifting times If anchored spirits in their blythest motion Dip to their anchors veiled within the ocean, Catching too staid a measure for their rhymes. An age comes on, which came three times of old, When the enfeebled nations shall stand still To be by Christian science shaped at will; And Taste and Art, rejecting heathen mould, Shall draw their types from Europe's middle night, Well pleased if such good darkness be their light! PAST FRIENDS Are there such things as friends that pass away? When each fresh opening season of our life, Through the dim struggling crowd and weary strife, Brings kindred spirits nigh whom we would pray Might live with us, and by our deathbed stay. Do these, our chosen ones, sink down at last Into the common grave of visions past? Ah! there are few men in the world can say They had a dream which they do not dream still; Few fountains in the heart which cease to play, When those whose touch evoked them at their will Sit there no more: and I my dreams fulfil When to high Heaven my tongue still nightly bears Old names, like broken music, in my prayers. |