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;