The Fighting Race
By Joseph I.C. Clarke (1846-1925) |
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"Read out the
names!" and Burke sat back,
And Kelly drooped his head,
While Shea -- they called him Scholar Jack --
Went
down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners,
marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded
man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal passers
-- all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,
Said Burke in an offhand way:
"We're all in that
dead man's list, by Cripe!
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain,"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Wherever there's
Kellys there's trouble," said Burke.
"Wherever
fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's
work,"
Said Kelly, "you'll find my name."
"And do we
fall short," said Burke, getting mad,
"When it's touch
and go for life?"
Said Shea, "It's thirty-odd years,
bedad,
Since I charged to drum and fife
Up Marye's
Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its
way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green
--
Kelly and Burke and Shea --
And the dead didn't
brag." "Well, here's to the flag!"
Said Kelly and Burke
and Shea.
"I wish 'twas in Ireland, for there's the
place,"
Said Burke, "that we'd die by right,
In the
cradle of our soldier race,
After one good stand-up
fight.
My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,
And
fighting was not his trade;
But his rusty pike's in the
cabin still,
With Hessian blood on the blade."
"Aye, aye," said Kelly, "the pikes were great
When the
word was 'clear the way!'
We were thick on the roll in
ninety-eight --
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well,
here's to the pike and the sword and the like!"
Said
Kelly and Burke and Shea.
And Shea, the scholar,
with rising joy,
Said, "We were at Ramillies.
We
left our bones at Fontenoy
And up in the Pyrenees.
Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain,
Cremona, Lille and
Ghent,
We're all over Austria, France and Spain,
Wherever they pitched a tent.
We've died for England
from Waterloo
To Egypt and Dargai;
And still there's
enough for a corps or a crew,
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here is to good honest fighting blood!"
Said
Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Oh, the fighting races
don't die out,
If they seldom die in bed,
For love
is first in their hearts, no doubt,"
Said Burke; then
Kelly said:
"When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,
The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a
hundred lands
Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line,
that for Gabriel's trumpet waits,
Will stretch three
deep that day,
From Jehoshaphat to the Golden Gates --
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's thank
God for the race and the sod!"
Said Kelly and Burke and
Shea.
1898 |
By
Joseph I.C. Clarke (1846-1925)
Listed November 30, 2012
A note at the end of the poem states the date
of composition as
March 16, 1898
about a month after the sinking of the Maine, and
before
the declaration of war with Spain (April 11).
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