Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CELTIC CROSS, by THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CELTIC CROSS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Through storm and fire and gloom
Last Line: When erin's self is drown'd.
Subject(s): Ireland; Irish


THROUGH storm and fire and gloom, I see it stand,
Firm, broad, and tall,
The Celtic Cross that marks our Fatherland,
Amid them all!
Druids and Danes and Saxons vainly rage
Around its base;
It standeth shock on shock, and age on age,
Star of our scatter'd race.

O Holy Cross! dear symbol of the dread
Death of our Lord,
Around thee long have slept our martyr dead
Sward over sward.
An hundred bishops I myself can count
Among the slain:
Chiefs, captains, rank and file, a shining mount
Of God's ripe grain.

The monarch's mace, the Puritan's claymore,
Smote thee not down;
On headland steep, on mountain summit hoar,
In mart and town,
In Glendalough, in Ara, in Tyrone,
We find thee still,
Thy open arms still stretching to thine own,
O'er town and lough and hill.

And would they tear thee out of Irish soil,
The guilty fools!
How time must mock their antiquated toil
And broken tools!
Cranmer and Cromwell from thy grasp retir'd,
Baffled and thrown;
William and Anne to sap thy site conspir'd, --
The rest is known.

Holy Saint Patrick, father of our faith,
Belov'd of God!
Shield thy dear Church from the impending scaith,
Or, if the rod
Must scourge it yet again, inspire and raise
To emprise high
Men like the heroic race of other days,
Who joyed to die.

Fear! wherefore should the Celtic people fear
Their Church's fate?
The day is not -- the day was never near --
Could desolate
The Destin'd Island, all whose seedy clay
Is holy ground:
Its cross shall stand till that predestin'd day
When Erin's self is drown'd.





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