A Poem Written In Time Of Trouble By An Irish Priest Who Had Taken Orders In France

My thoughts, my grief! are without strength     My spirit is journeying towards death     My eyes are as a frozen sea     My tears my daily food;     There is nothing in life but only misery.     My poor heart is torn     And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,     Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.     Misfortune has come upon us all together     The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong     The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained     The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;     And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.     Our feasts are without any voice of priests     And none at them but women lamenting     Tearing their hair with troubled minds     Keening miserably after the Fenians.     The pipes of our organs are broken     Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned     That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland.     Until the strong men come back across the sea     There is no help for us but bitter crying,     Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.     I do not know of anything under the sky     That is friendly or favourable to the Gael     But only the sea that our need brings us to,     Or the wind that blows to the harbour     The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;     And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,     For we increase the sea with our tears     And the wandering wind with our sighs.