Easter
‘16
A
hundred years have come and gone,
since
proclamation day.
How
would the signatories feel?
Of
our island today.
Reflect
upon what happened then.
Commemorate
their deed.
For
what we have we owe to them.
A
country that they freed.
Penultimate,
Easter sixteen.
For
self rule and freedom.
Release
from the rusting shackles
of
the ageing
kingdom.
Stood
outside of the GPO,
looking
on Sackville Street,
Pearse
proclaimed our independence
Liberty’s
heart did beat.
Six
days the uprising did rage.
Many
it did divide,
As
the volunteers fought and died,
As
mauser bullets cried.
Heavy
handed foreign Maxwell,
Ordered
execution.
Filled
the nation with revulsion,
The
resonance of the events,
from
the rebellion week
to
the shock wave of civil war.
Sovereignty
oblique.
Let’s
not lose what they gave to us.
Nor
idle hands extract,
for
the whims of politicians
and
newspaper impact.
To
those then, before and after,
Easter
nineteen sixteen.
Who
gave themselves so we can choose.
Éirinn
go brách most green.
Forget
not their sacrifices,
free
will they did attain.
It
can be lost so easily,
Much
harder to regain.
Remember
the signatories,
Connolly,
Pearse and Clarke,
Plunkett,
MacDermott, MacDonagh
and
Ceannt, they left their mark.
A
hundred years have come and gone,
since
proclamation day.
How
would the signatories feel?
Of
our island today.
