Hold The Harvest.

Now are you men, or are you kine, ye tillers of the soil?

Would you be free, or evermore, the rich man's cattle, toil?

The shadow on the dial hangs that points the fatal hour —

Now hold your own! Or, branded slaves, forever cringe and cower.

The serpent’s curse upon you lies — ye writhe within the dust,

Ye fill your mouths with beggar’s swill, ye grovel for a crust:

Your lords have set their blood-stained heels upon your shameful heads,

Yet they are kind — they leave you still their ditches for your beds!

Oh, by the God Who made us all — the seignior and the serf —

Rise up! and swear this day to hold your own green Irish turf!

Rise up! and plant your feet as men where now you crawl as slaves,

And make your harvest-fields your camps, or make of them your graves.

The birds of prey are hovering round, the vultures wheel and swoop —

They come, the coronetted ghouls! with drum-beat and with troop —

They come to fatten on your flesh, your children's and your wives’;

Ye die but once — hold fast your lands, and, if ye can, your lives.

Let go the trembling emigrant — not such as he ye need;

Let go the lucre-loving wretch that flies his land for greed;

Let not one coward stay to clog your manhood’s waking power;

Let not one sordid churl pollute the Nation’s natal hour.

Yes, let them go! — the caitiff rout, that shirk the struggle now —

The light that crowns your victory shall scorch each recreant brow,

And in the annals of your race, black parallels in shame,

Shall stand by traitor’s and by spy's, the base deserter's name.

Three hundred years your crops have sprung, by murdered corpses fed —

Your butchered sires, your famished sires, for ghastly compost spread;

Their bones have fertilised your fields, their blood has fallen like rain;

They died that you might eat and live — God! have they died in vain?

The yellow corn starts blithely up; beneath it lies a grave —

Your father died in “Forty-eight”— his life for yours he gave —

He died, that you, his son, might learn there is no helper nigh.

Except for him who, save in fight, has sworn he will not die.

The hour has struck. Fate holds the dice, we stand with bated breath;

Now who shall have our harvest fair? — ‘tis Life that plays with Death;

Now who shall have our Motherland! — 'tis Right that plays with Might;

The peasant’s arms were weak indeed in such unequal fight!

But God is on the peasant’s side, the God that loves the poor,

His angels stand with flaming swords on every mount and moor.

They guard the poor man's flocks, and herds, they guard his ripening grain,

The robber sinks beneath their curse beside his ill-got gain.

O pallid serfs! whose groans and prayers have wearied Heaven full long.

Look up! there is a Law above, beyond all legal wrong;

Rise up! the answer to your prayers shall come, tornado-borne,

And ye shell hold your homesteads dear, and ye shall reap the corn!

But your own hands upraised to guard shall draw the answer down,

And bold and stern the deeds must be that oath and prayer shall crown;

God only fights for them who fight — now hush the useless moan,

And set your faces as a flint and swear to Hold Your Own!

Fanny Parnell