The Exile of the Gael
IT is sweet to rejoice for a day,—
For a day that is reached at last!
It is well for wanderers in new lands,
Slow climbers toward a lofty mountain pass,
Yearning with hearts and eyes strained ever upward,
To pause, and rest, on the summit,—
To stand between two limitless outlooks,—
Behind them, a winding path through familiar pains and ventures;
Before them, the streams unbridged and the vales untraveled.
What shall they do nobler than mark their passage,
With kindly hearts, mayhap for kindred to follow?
What shall they do wiser than pile a cairn
With stones from the wayside, that their tracks and names
Be not blown from the hills like sand, and their story be lost forever?
'Hither,' the cairn shall tell, 'Hither they came and rested!'
'Whither?' the searcher shall ask, with questioning eyes on their future.
Hither and Whither! O Maker of Nations! Hither and Whither the sea speaks,
Heaving; the forest speaks, dying; the Summer whispers,
Like a sentry giving up the watchword, to the muffled Winter.
Hither and Whither! the Earth calls wheeling to the Sun;
And like ships on the deep at night, the stars interflash the signal.
Hither and Whither, the exiles' cairn on the hill speaks,—
Yea, as loudly as the sea and the earth and the stars.
The heart is earth's exile: the soul is heaven's;
And God has made no higher mystery for stars.
Hither—from home! sobs the torn flower on the river:
Wails the river itself as it enters the bitter ocean;
Moans the iron in the furnace at the premonition of melting;
Cries the scattered grain in Spring at the passage of the harrow.
In the iceberg is frozen the rain's dream of exile from the fields;
The shower falls sighing for the opaline hills of cloud;
And the clouds on the bare mountains weep their daughter-love for the sea.
Exile is God's alchemy! Nations he forms like metals,—
Mixing their strength and their tenderness;
Tempering pride with shame and victory with affliction;
Meting their courage, their faith and their fortitude,—
Timing their genesis to the world's needs!
'What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sous of the Gael?
What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail?
Here build we higher and deeper than men ever built before;
And we raise no Shinar tower, but a temple forevermore.
What have ye brought from Erin your hapless land could spare?
Her tears, defeats, and miseries? Are these, indeed, your share?
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
Added by Poetry Lover
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