Roger Casement

“ Not yet—altho' in skirmish and in many a scattered fight
We hold them—still with waiting eye, O'Neill smiles in despite;
Till slanting on our backs the sun full on their faces fell.
Then blinding axe and battle spear rose with a sudden swell
"For God, and Church, and Country now—upon them every man;
But hold your strength until ye see them scarce a pike-length's span;
The Red Hand, ever uppermost, strike home your strongest blow";
And with a yell our feet outsped the words of Owen Roe. ”

“ Oh Lord! from many a cloudy hill then streamed our prayers to Thee,
And like the dawn on summer hills, that only watchers see,
Thy glorious hope shone on us long before the sleeping foe
Knew that their doom had broken on the sword of Owen Roe. ”

“ In giving these few poems of Roger Casement to the Irish people I do not claim for them any special value as Irish literature. Roger Casement was not a poet, he would have been the last to lay claim to any such title, but, like the greater part of his fellow-countrymen, he felt from time to time the impulse to express some particular thought in verse, and he used to jot down, sometimes in a letter to a friend, sometimes on an odd half sheet of paper, the thought clothed in a poetic form just as it came into his mind. ”

“ Once, years before his retirement, he was joking with a friend about some wonderful plan that was conceived in a mood of playfulness, and the carrying out of which would have involved considerable danger. The friend pointed out that the disadvantage of it all lay in the fact that they might accidentally kill someone, and "then," she added, "we'd be hanged." Roger Casement was silent for a moment, his deepset eyes fixed on an invisible goal, and then he said very quietly, "I think I shall be hanged for Ireland." ”

“ That softly sets between.
Love is the ocean's purple,
Love is the mountain's crest,
Love is the golden Eagle
That hither builds his nest.
The wind that lists at morning.
The first song of the bird,
The leaves that stir so lightly
Before a limb has stirred:
These are my love's harbingers
By gathering music drawn.
Oh! wake my love and own them,
Thou life voice of the Dawn.
[Pg 4]
"Love's Cares"
Oh! what cares Love for a sunburnt skin?
Love laughs and sighs for it all the same;
Love seeks a blush that is far within
From the glow of his asking eyes that came—
Oh! ”

“ Here spring the mighty fountains pure and strong,
That bear sweet change of breath to city throng,
Who, had the sea no breeze, would soon have died.
So though the sun shines not in such a blue,
Nor have the stars the meaning youth deviced,
The heavens are nigher, and a light shines through
The brightness that nor sun nor stars sufficed;
And on this lonely waste we find it true
Lost youth and love, not lost, are hid with Christ.
[Pg 10]
The Streets of Catania
(The streets of Catania are paved with blocks of the lava of Aetna.) ”

“ It was in Ireland he always felt at home; he hated big cities, noise, music-halls, and restaurants. He wrote from London on one visit, "I feel more and more of a foreigner here"; but in the Irish country, with the simple country folk, he was always content. One of the happiest experiences of his life in later years was a short visit he paid to Tory Island in 1912, when he organised a Ceilidh, to which everyone on the island was invited. ”

“ Love bears it gently away with him.
Oh! what cares Love for a wounded breast?
Love shows his own with a broader scar:
'Tis only those who have loved the best
Can say where the wounds of loving are. ”

“ During all the time of his varied experiences abroad [Pg xvi] in Africa and South America, his mind turned always with longing and affection to Ireland. He looked upon himself as an Irishman before all things. He eagerly watched for the rare arrival of mails bringing word of Ireland and her doings. "Send me news of Ireland," he wrote from South America, "and also what the papers say about the Congo, but chiefly Ireland; Ireland first, last, and for ever."
Although not a rich man (he had no private means) he contributed generously to all Irish schemes for furthering the National life. ”

“ So have many others who died for Ireland; he stands among his peers, the Irish martyrs. He would not have [Pg xviii] chosen to die otherwise, the love of his life was Kathleen ni Houlihan; when he thought he heard her voice calling from her four green fields he had no choice but to obey, though he knew it led to death; but death which comes in such a form to the body leaves the spirit but freer to carry on its purpose. ”

“ He loved the Tory people and used to plan many times to go back and visit them. Tory has a sort of fascination about it, it looks so remote and unreal, "like an opal jewel in a pale blue sea," he described it once in a letter. ”

“ Roger Casement from his earliest days was before everything else a lover of Ireland. In his school [Pg xi] days he begged from the aunt, with whom he spent his holidays, for possession of an attic room which he turned into a little study, and the writer remembers the walls papered with cartoons cut out of the Weekly Freeman, showing the various Irish Nationalists who had suffered imprisonment at English hands for the sake of their belief in Ireland a Nation. ”

“ He was wholly indifferent to money for its own sake. His scrupulous integrity as to public funds was illustrated by the following:—When he was called to give evidence before a certain commission, as he was waiting his turn with others who had to travel to London for the same purpose, one of the secretaries remarked to a witness, "Do you see that man?" (pointing to Roger Casement) , "Well, all the rest have charged first-class railway fares, but he has put down third."
He wrote much on the Irish question. ”

“ Having told the fortunes of the lady and of the second companion, she turned at last to Roger Casement, and stated that his was the most interesting fate. She described his adventurous life in broad outline, and then said, "You must take care: at the age of 52 you will come to a violent end." Roger Casement was within a month of his fifty-second birthday when he died. ”