Bernard O'Dowd - A Keynote [Extract]

Heard, from the speaking stones that strew
The hillside of Success;
From spheres whose harmonies anew
Can those who listen bless;

From breaths of every sacred isle
By which my Muses move,
Released from battle's claim a while,
In Brendan voyage of Love;

From shambles of the Dispossessed;
From Croesus in his sty;
From old Democracy obsessed
By fiends about to die:

Read, in the scars of veterans
In Want's resultless fray;
In noon-day Science' futile plans
To yoke the soul to clay;

In watchings of the social sky
And soundings of its deep;
And where Oppression's vultures fly,
And sad Redeemers weep;

'Neath living palimpsests of Pain;
On shards of deathless song;
hi God's magnificent disdain
Of Might enthroned on Wrong;

Read where, unheeded, outcasts groan,
And waits Rebellion's form:
These verses voice an undertone-
The prelude to a storm?

Bernard O'Dowd

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