CELT document E850004-035

A Song for the Irish Militia

Thomas Osborne Davis

Edited by T. W. Rolleston

Whole text

     p.350

    A Song for the Irish Militia

  1. The tribune's tongue and poet's pen
    May sow the seed in prostrate men ;
    But 'tis the soldier's sword alone
    Can reap the crop so bravely sown!
    No more I'll sing nor idly pine,
    But train my soul to lead a line—
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death, so Ireland's free!
  2.  p.351
  3. No foe would fear your thunder words,
    If 'twere not for your lightning swords—
    If tyrants yield when millions pray,
    'Tis less they link in war array ;
    Nor peace itself is safe, but when
    The sword is sheathed by fighting men—
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death, so Ireland's free!
  4. The rifle brown and sabre bright
    Can freely speak and nobly write—
    What prophets preached the truth so well
    As HOFER, BRIAN, BRUCE, and TEET ?
    God guard the creed these heroes taught—
    That blood-bought Freedom's cheaply bought
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death, so Ireland's free!
  5. Then, welcome be the bivouac,
    The hardy stand, and fierce attack,
    Where pikes will tame their carbineers,
    And rifles thin their bay'neteers,
    And every field the island through
    Will show “what Irishmen can do!”
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death so Ireland's free!
  6. Yet, 'tis not strength and 'tis not steel
    Alone can make the English reel ;
    But wisdom, working day by day,
    Till comes the time for passion's sway— p.352
    The patient dint and powder shock,
    Can blast an empire like a rock.
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death, so Ireland's free!
  7. The tribune's tongue and poet's pen
    May sow the seed in slavish men ;
    But 'tis the soldier's sword alone
    Can reap the harvest when 'tis grown.
    No more I'll sing, no more I'll pine,
    But train my soul to lead a line—
    A soldier's life's the life for me—
    A soldier's death, so Ireland's free.

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Title statement

Title (uniform): A Song for the Irish Militia

Author: Thomas Osborne Davis

Editor: T. W. Rolleston

Responsibility statement

Electronic edition compiled and proof corrections by: Beatrix Färber and Juliette Maffet

Edition statement

1. First draft, revised and corrected.

Extent: 897 words

Publication statement

Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College Cork

Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

Date: 2012

Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.

CELT document ID: E850004-035

Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.

Source description

Source

  • First published in the Nation on 1 February 1845.

Other writings by Thomas Davis

  1. Thomas Davis, Essays Literary and Historical, ed. by D. J. O'Donoghue, Dundalk 1914.
  2. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (ed.), Thomas Davis, the memoirs of an Irish patriot, 1840-1846. 1890. [Reprinted entitled 'Thomas Davis' with an introduction of Brendan Clifford. Millstreet, Aubane Historical Society, 2000.]
  3. Thomas Davis: selections from his prose and poetry. [Edited] with an introduction by T. W. Rolleston. London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin (Every Irishman's Library). 1910. [Published in Dublin by the Talbot press, 1914.]
  4. Thomas Osborne Davis, Literary and historical essays 1846. Reprinted 1998, Washington, DC: Woodstock Books.
  5. Essays of Thomas Davis. New York, Lemma Pub. Corp. 1974, 1914 [Reprint of the 1914 ed. published by W. Tempest, Dundalk, Ireland, under the title 'Essays literary and historical'.]
  6. Thomas Davis: essays and poems, with a centenary memoir, 1845-1945. Dublin, M.H. Gill and Son, 1945. [Foreword by an Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera.]
  7. Angela Clifford, Godless colleges and mixed education in Ireland: extracts from speeches and writings of Thomas Wyse, Daniel O'Connell, Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, Frank Hugh O'Donnell and others. Belfast: Athol, 1992.

Davis, Thomas Osborne (1910). ‘A Song for the Irish Militia’. In: Thomas Davis: Selections from his prose and poetry‍. Ed. by T. W. Rolleston. Dublin and London: The Talbot Press, pp. 350–352.

You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:

@incollection{E850004-035,
  author 	 = {Thomas Osborne Davis},
  title 	 = {A Song for the Irish Militia},
  editor 	 = {T. W. Rolleston},
  booktitle 	 = {Thomas Davis: Selections from his prose and poetry},
  publisher 	 = {The Talbot Press},
  address 	 = {Dublin and London},
  date 	 = {1910},
  pages 	 = {350–352}
}

 E850004-035.bib

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Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

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Correction: Text has been proof-read twice and parsed.

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Quotation: There is no direct speech.

Hyphenation: Soft hyphens are silently removed. When a hyphenated word (and subsequent punctuation mark) crosses a page-break, this break is marked after the completion of the word (and punctuation mark).

Segmentation: div0=the poem. Page-breaks are marked pb n="".

Standard values: Dates are standardized in the ISO form yyyy-mm-dd.

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Profile description

Creation: by Thomas Davis

Date: 1840s

Language usage

  • The text is in English. (en)

Keywords: literary; poetry; 19c

Revision description

(Most recent first)

  1. 2012-01-31: File proofed (2), file parsed; SGML and HTML files created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  2. 2012-01-16: File proofed (1); header created; structural and content markup applied. (ed. Juliette Maffet)
  3. 1996: Text captured by scanning. (ed. Audrey Murphy)

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  • Dates are standardized in the ISO form yyyy-mm-dd.

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