Poems (Ford)/To Mrs. Sadlier

TO MRS. SADLIER, [On reading her splendid historical tale, "The Confederate Chieftains."']

Oh, thou whose genius-gifted pen
Is as a potent, magic wand
Whose touch awakes to life and power
The buried heroes of our land,
My heart goes out in love to thee,
While poring o'er the breathing page
Where grandly live and sternly strive
The chieftains of a vanished age.

Our great and glorious dead, who sleep
In heroes' or in martyrs' graves,
Thou bringest back to tell their sons
How much they loathed the name of slaves,
How their proud eagle-spirits scorned
To stoop from Freedom's lofty height,
And reared a wall of dauntless hearts
Against Oppression's banded might.

Their grandly mournful story thrills
Our hearts with mingled grief and pride,
And who shall dare, because they failed,
To say in vain they strove and died?
None,—for the land that gave them birth,
That holds their ashes on her breast,
Remembering their noble deeds,
In chains can never, never rest.

'T is given to thy hand to ope
The secret chambers of the heart,
To bid it bound with joy or mirth,
Or cause grief's hidden founts to start;
Oh, cold must be the breast in which
Thy words awake no genial glow,
And hard the eye that does not weep
The Nation's idol—Owen Roe.

From the bright radiance thou hast flung
Around the struggles of the Past,
The Present grasps a ray of hope
Upon the Future's path to cast;
Oh, may God ever shield and bless
The great, true heart and gifted hand
That twine such deathless wreaths to lay
Upon the shrine of Fatherland!