From Odin's Last Hour, and Other Poems By Henry McDonald Flecher
In Ireland it has been a belief for ages among a large part of the peasantry, that a spirit called the Banshie (White Woman) utters one or more wailing cries before a death in any of the families to which she is attached.
This venerable and poetic superstition is glanced at in the following lines from a Gaelic Bard:—
"For the high Milesian race alone
Ever flows the music of her woe."
Our hero, Harry Munro, of Lisburn, who headed the County Down patriots in 1798, and, having been defated and taken prisoner, was executed in his native town, although destitute of the Hibernian O or Mac, his name is, nevertheless, in both roots Celtic.
........................
Gloomy and fierce had the midnight passed
Like a demon of wrong on the reinless blast
And a cloud which scowled like the face of a foe,
Its shadow a pall on the plain below,
Fleeted away on the wings of air
Revealing the welkin cold and fair,
And the east moon wan as an air-borne wraith
Or a virgin wound in the robes of death,
While slanted her faintly quivering beam
On the mirroring breast of Lagan's stream.
From a lone ravine that in darkness lay
Amid sentinel mountains stern and gray,
Whose treasuring caves held lance and brand
To avenge the wrongs of an outraged land,
A chieftain strode, the brave Munro,
Abreast of a hill-born torrent's flow.
Sudden the tones of a wild weird lay
From a lonely rath on his lonely way
Thrilled the soul like some witching strain
From a pleasure barge on the still blue main
Or the "voice and the instrument" wafted o'er
A moonlit lake to a silent shore:
Now a voiced despair, now the murmurs low
Of a wretch resigning her soul to woe;
Now a muffled moan on the rising breeze
As it sweeps through the boughs of the spectral trees
Now a lost soul's shriek on the groaning gale;
Now a manaic maiden's hopeless wail,
It startles the glens so still and deep
And the echoes of night on each ghostly steep.
'Tis the weird Banshie, 'tis her warning cry;
Her white robes gleam 'twixt earth and sky
As lightly she floats from a fairy thorn
On the west wind's wings to the land of morn.
Unmoved by the phantom of future woe
Is the resolute heart of the brave Munro,
As he sternly prepares for the deadly strife
In the glorious cause that demands his life.
* * *
A gorgeous eve in the sun-crowned June
Smiles blithe to the honey-billed ousel's tune
And the voices of Lisnagarvy come
Up Lagan's vale with a joyous hum,
And the chieftain's couriers wide and far
Muster the North to the rising war:
It is Liberty's call, it is Erin's cry—
"To the battle, ye brave, and be men or die!"
Sudden a cry that too well he knew,
An unearthly wail from the welkin's blue!—
* * *
The hour has come when the hero's glaive
Is bathed in the foam of the combat's wave.
Now! the fierce joys of the battle begin,
For must not the right and the righteous win?
"Victorious Erin!" already the goal
Seems gained in the hopes of his patriot soul,
For tyranny trembles at valor's frown
From the bristling summits of war-waked Down,
Whence sweep the brave like a mountain flood—
But, Freedom falls in her children's blood;
And, borne away with that current bright,
Is carried afar from their fainting sight.
* * *
Chained and alone as he waits his doom—
From the felon's cell to the felon's tomb—
That spirit who scans the scrolls of fate,
And learns the secret of life's last date,
The dread Banshee, with her boding wail
Breaks on the gloom of his midnight jail.
But his soul rose strong and his heart beat high
For he felt 'twas a pride and a fame to die.
By the hangman's rope or the hero's brand,
A forlorn hope slain for his bleeding land.
And he felt, though the sun of his life went down,
That a dayspring should come with its bright renown;
For he knew that no patriot falls in vain;
But a host springs up from his blood again,
(As harvests rise from the summer rain)
To crush the tyrant and rend his chain.
No comments:
Post a Comment