Easter Rising 1916 Poetry
Sad Heart of an Irish Rebel
‘Why Do Ye Torture Me?’
Revered poet, rebel, lawyer and visionary
Departed, not dissolved
Your ink, though arid and dusty
Echo of equality and justice endure
Your august literary talent,
Rebel Poet, So driven to save your country, willing to die for your cause,
I wish your young heart did not race in such haste, You a word master and crafter, you with a mind so brilliant, you could have negotiated to a much higher plane. Things could have been so much different,
I wish that I never had to visit your place of execution, but I did, and it was a sad occasion visiting Kilmainham Gaol, where all 1916 rebel leaders were executed in early summer of 1916.
A terrible sadness was born, a sadness that still echoes in so many hearts,
One word, one tune, one string note triggers the heart.
And yes PH Pearse, we know you did whistle a tune on your way to the firing squad,
What tune did you whistle on your death journey?
The tune had no meaning to the ear on which it fell
that ear was tone deaf to your culture, creed, aspirations and rich history.
So what was the tune?
I’m going to take a guess and I very much stand to be corrected,
I think it was Boolavogue
Why Do Ye Torture Me? – Poem by Patrick Henry Pearse
- Why are ye torturing me, O desires of my heart?
Torturing me and paining me by day and by night?
Hunting me as a poor deer would be hunted on a hill,
A poor long-wearied deer with the hound-pack after him
There’s no ease to my paining in the loneliness of the hills,
But the cry of the hunters terrifically to be heard,
The cry of my desires haunting me without respite,—
O ravening hounds, long is your run!
No satisfying can come to my desires while I live,
For the satisfaction I desired yesterday is no satisfaction,
And the hound-pack is the greedier of the satisfaction it has got,—
And forever I shall not sleep till I sleep in the grave.
Bean Sléibhe Ag Caoineadh A Mhac (A Woman Of The Mountain Keens Her Son) – Poem by Patrick Henry Pearse
Grief on the death, it has blackened my heart:
lt has snatched my love and left me desolate,
Without friend or companion under the roof of my house
But this sorrow in the midst of me, and I keening.
As I walked the mountain in the evening
The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,
The sweet snipe spoke and the voiceful curlew
Relating to me that my darling was dead.
I called to you and your voice I heard not,
I called again and I got no answer,
I kissed your mouth, and O God how cold it was!
Ah, cold is your bed in the, lonely churchyard.
The Wayfarer – Poem by Patrick Henry Pearse
The beauty of the world hath made me sad
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.