Thomas D'Arcy McGee - Home Sonnets--Address to Ireland IV lyrics

Mother of exiles! from your soil to-day New myriads are destroy'd or swept away; The crowded graveyards grow no longer green, The daily dead have scanty space, I ween; The groaning ships, freighted with want and grief, Entomb in every wave a fugitive; The sword no more an Irish weapon is-- The spirit of the land no longer lives; Mother! 'twas k**'d before the famine came-- The stubble was prepared to meet the flame; All manly souls were from their bodies torn, And what avails it if the bodies burn? Mother of soldiers! may we hope to be Yet fit to strike for vengeance and for thee!