For there was lightning in my blood,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Oh! there was lightning in my blood,
Red lightning lightened through my blood,
My Dark Rosaleen!

Death to the world, and the world’s idle praise, —
The faithless saw his faith with evil eyes,
They doom’d him without stain, and here he dies.

We'll wake the Harp of Tara's Hall
With music streams once more
And the birds shall ring with freedom
Throughout green Erin's shore.

No more the feet of foemen shall taint our Northern soil,
No more the waving cornfields shall be the Saxon’s spoil.
Our flag no longer drooping, each fold shall now reveal,
And wave for God and Erin and our darling Hugh O’Neill.

He rejoices with quick leaps
When in his sharp claw sticks a mouse:
I too rejoice when I have grasped
A problem difficult and dearly loved.

These weapons put behind you:
hide henceforth your curling hair;
do not bare that white breast
that spares no living man.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?

We would no Irish sign efface,
But yet our lips would gladlier hail
The firstborn of the Coming Race
Than the last splendour of the Gael.

My Irish isn’t clean, my grammar doesn’t gleam
In this soft light, but I still like
It’s punctuality, musicality, the spirituality with which we once spoke
My mother’s tongue was cut from my throat

On nations fixed in right and truth,
God would bestow eternal youth.

I have read in ancient annals of a race of gallant men
Who fear’d neither Dane nor Devil; but it is long since then —
And "cowardice is virtue,'' so runs the modern creed

A hungry Gaelic chiefling in Ulster,

Whose blood with the Norseman's rotted in the rain on a heather hill:

These by the world's time were very recent

Forefathers of yours. And you are a maker of verses.

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

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

To lands where Faith's bright flag unfurled

By those who here have knelt

Shall give unto a newer world

The sceptre of the Celt.

'He Who is wrapped in purple robes,

With planets in His care,

Had pity on the least of things

Asleep upon a chair.

God of heaven, bless our banner—nerve our sinews for the strife!

Fight we now for all that's holy—for our altars, land and life—

For red vengeance on the spoiler, whom the blazing temples trace

For the honor of our maidens and the glory of our race!

In three days' time, Cuchulain with a moan

Stood up, and came to the long sands alone:

For four days warred he with the bitter tide;

And the waves flowed above him, and he died.

And we'll swear by the thousands who, famished, unfed,
Died down in the ditches, wild-howling for bread;
And we'll vow by our heroes, whose spirits have fled,
And we'll swear by the bones in each coffinless bed,
That we'll battle the Briton through danger and dread;