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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, October 1917

Ireland

page 29

Ireland

The torchlight shimmered on the brows of kings
Whom Earth had bidden to her banquet board,
The minstrels played on lutes and viols of majesty.
I looked for one whose wit and lissom fire
Should startle homage from the mouths of men
And found her not.
But one came limping, laden from afar—
I knew the scarlet lips, the strange bright hair,
The stormy eyes that spake of mutiny—
Leading a ragged train of gay, wild souls
From that wronged land where e'en the nesting birds
From out the troubled furze sing sorrow brokenly.
My fingers dropped the wine-cup, and I ran
In stumbling haste to bend an eager knee
And lay my page ship at her weary feet,
But raising white, defiant lids, she mocked me—
"Lo! I serve."

—E. M. D.