The Rose Tree

'O WORDS are lightly spoken,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.'

"It needs to be but watered,'
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.'

"But where can we draw water,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.'

- W.B. Yeats

_______

Featured on The Wolfe Tones album "Let The People Sing":

The man was all shot through
that came today into the barrack square
And a soldier I, I am not proud to say
that we killed him there
They brought him from the prison hospital
and to see him in that chair
I swear his smile would, would far more quickly
call a man to prayer

Maybe, maybe I don't understand
this thing that makes these rebels die
Yet all men love freedom
and the spring clear in the sky
I wouldn't do this deed again
for all that I hold by
As I gazed down my rifle at his breast
but then, then a soldier I

They say he was different, kindly too apart
from all the rest
A lover of the poor -
his wounds ill dressed
He faced us like a man
who knew a greater pain
Than blows or bullets ere the world began:
died he in vain

Ready, Present, and him just smiling,
Christ I felt my rifle shake
His wounds all open
and around his chair a pool of blood
And I swear his lips said "fire"
before my rifle shot that cursed lead
And I, I was picked
to kill a man like that, James Connolly

- Liam MacGabhainn