Poetry: ‘My Mother Tongue’ by Maisie McAllister
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
Nationality by Thomas Davis
On nations fixed in right and truth,
God would bestow eternal youth.
The Exile’s Meditation by Thomas D’Arcy McGee
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
Lament For Thomas Davis by Samuel Ferguson
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