| |
| THEY call us aliens, we are told, | |
| Because our wayward visions stray | |
| From that dim banner they unfold, | |
| The dreams of worn-out yesterday. | |
| The sum of all the past is theirs, | 5 |
| The creeds, the deeds, the fame, the name, | |
| Whose death-created glory flares | |
| And dims the spark of living flame. | |
| They weave the necromancer’s spell, | |
| And burst the graves where martyrs slept, | 10 |
| Their ancient story to retell, | |
| Renewing tears the dead have wept. | |
| And they would have us join their dirge, | |
| This worship of an extinct fire | |
| In which they drift beyond the verge | 15 |
| Where races all outworn expire. | |
| The worship of the dead is not | |
| A worship that our hearts allow, | |
| Though every famous shade were wrought | |
| With woven thorns above the brow. | 20 |
| We fling our answer back in scorn: | |
| “We are less children of this clime | |
| Than of some nation yet unborn | |
| Or empire in the womb of time. | |
| We hold the Ireland in the heart | 25 |
| More than the land our eyes have seen, | |
| And love the goal for which we start | |
| More than the tale of what has been.” | |
| The generations as they rise | |
| May live the life men lived before, | 30 |
| Still hold the thought once held as wise, | |
| Go in and out by the same door. | |
| We leave the easy peace it brings: | |
| The few we are shall still unite | |
| In fealty to unseen kings | 35 |
| Or unimaginable light. | |
| We would no Irish sign efface, | |
| But yet our lips would gladlier hail | |
| The firstborn of the Coming Race | |
| Than the last splendour of the Gael. | 40 |
| No blazoned banner we unfold— | |
| One charge alone we give to youth, | |
| Against the sceptred myth to hold | |
| The golden heresy of truth. | |
| |
