Faithful to the Last
SO they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,
A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;
Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,
And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;
All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,
With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,
Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,
Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,
Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,
Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;
With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,
With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,
You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?
You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;
You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,
And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;
But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,
The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,
A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,
So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!