Oh tidings of freedom! oh accents of hope!
Waft, waft them, ye zephyrs, to Erin's blue sea,
And refresh with their sounds every son of the Pope,
From Dingle-a-cooch to far Donaghadee.

" If mutely the slave will endure and obey,
" Nor clanking his fetters nor breathing his pains,
" His masters perhaps at some far distant day
" May think (tender tyrants!) of loosening his chains. "

Wise " if " and " perhaps! " — precious salve for our wounds,
If he who would rule thus o'er manacled mutes,
Could check the free spring-tide of Mind that resounds.
Even now at his, feet, like the sea at Canute's.

But, no, 't is in vain — the grand impulse is given —
Man knows his high Charter, and knowing will claim;
And if ruin must follow where fetters are riven,
Be theirs whOhave forged them the guilt and the shame.

" If the slave will be silent! " — vain Soldier, beware —
There is a dead silence the wronged may assume,
When the feeling, sent back from the lips in despair,
But clings round the heart with a deadlier gloom; —

When the blush that long burned on the suppliant's cheek,
Gives place to the avenger's pale, resolute hue;
And the tongue that once threatened, disdaining to speak ,
Consigns to the arm the high office — to do .

If men in that silence should think of the hour
When proudly their fathers in panoply stood,
Presenting alike a bold front-work of power
To the despot on land and the foe on the flood: —

That hour when a Voice had come forth from the west,
To the slave bringing hopes, to the tyrant alarms;
And a lesson long lookt for was taught the opprest,
That kings are as dust before freemen in arms!

If , awfuller still, the mute slave should recall
That dream of his boyhood, when Freedom's sweet day
At length seemed to break thro' a long night of thrall,
And Union and Hope went abroad in its ray; —

If Fancy should tell him, that Day-spring of Good,
Tho' swiftly its light died away from his chain,
Tho' darkly it set in a nation's best blood,
Now wants but invoking to shine out again;

If — if , I say — breathings like these should come o'er
The chords of remembrance, and thrill as they come,
Then, — perhaps — ay, perhaps — but I dare not say more:
Thou hast willed that thy slaves should be mute — I am dumb.