. . . They caught them at the bend. He and his son Sat in the car, revolvers in their laps. From either side the stone-walled wintry road There flashed thin fire-streaks in the rainy dusk. The father swayed and fell, shot through the chest. The son was up, but one more fire-streak leaped Close from the pitch-black of a thick-set bush Not five yards from him, and lit all the face Of him whose sweetheart walked the Dublin streets For lust of him who gave one yell and fell Flat on the stony road, a sweltering corse. Then they came out, the men who did this thing, And looked upon their hatred’s retribution, While heedlessly the rattling car fled on. Grey-haired old wolf, your letch for peasants’ blood, For peasants’ sweat turned gold and silver and bronze, Is done, is done, for ever and ever is done! O foul young fox, no more young girls’ fresh lips Shall bruise and bleed to cool your lecher’s lust. Slowly from out the great high terraced clouds The round moon sailed. The dead were left alone.
I talked with one of those who did this thing, A coughing half-starved lad, mere skin and bone. I said: “They found upon those dead men, gold. Why did you not take it?” Then with proud-raised head, He looked at me and said: “_Sorr_, _we’re not thaves_!”
_Brother_, _from up the maimed and mangled earth_, _Strewn with our flesh and bones_, _wet with our blood_, _Let that great word go up to unjust heaven_ _And smite the cheek of the devil they’ve called_ “_God_!”
Crouched in the terrible land, The circle of pitiless ice, With frozen bloody feet And her pestilential summer’s Fever-throb in her brow, Look, in her deep slow eyes The mists of her sleep of faith Stir, and a gleam of light, The ray of a blood-red sun, Beams out into the dusk. From far away, from the west, From the east, from the south, there come Faint sweet breaths of the breeze Of plenteous warmth and light. And she moves, and around her neck She feels the iron-scaled Snake Whose fangs suck at the heart Hid by her tattered dress, By her lean and hanging teat. Russia, O land of faith, O realm of the ageless Slav, O oppressed one of eternity, This darkest hour is the hour, The hour of the coming dawn! Europe the rank, the corrupt, Lies stretched out at your feet. Turkey, India, lo all, East and south, it is yours!