| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| The Celtic Cross |
| | | Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825–68) |
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| THROUGH storm and fire and gloom, I see it stand, | |
| Firm, broad, and tall, | |
| The Celtic Cross that marks our Father-land, | |
| Amid them all! | |
| Druids and Danes and Saxons vainly rage | 5 |
| Around its base; | |
| It standeth shock on shock, and age on age, | |
| Star of our scatter’d race. | |
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| O Holy Cross! dear symbol of the dread | |
| Death of our Lord, | 10 |
| Around thee long have slept our martyr dead | |
| Sward over sward. | |
| An hundred bishops I myself can count | |
| Among the slain: | |
| Chiefs, captains, rank and file, a shining mount | 15 |
| Of God’s ripe grain. | |
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| The monarch’s mace, the Puritan’s claymore, | |
| Smote thee not down; | |
| On headland steep, on mountain summit hoar, | |
| In mart and town, | 20 |
| In Glendalough, in Ara, in Tyrone, | |
| We find thee still, | |
| Thy open arms still stretching to thine own, | |
| O’er town and lough and hill. | |
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| And would they tear thee out of Irish soil, | 25 |
| The guilty fools! | |
| How time must mock their antiquated toil | |
| And broken tools! | |
| Cranmer and Cromwell from thy grasp retir’d, | |
| Baffled and thrown; | 30 |
| William and Anne to sap thy site conspir’d,— | |
| The rest is known. | |
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| Holy Saint Patrick, father of our faith, | |
| Belov’d of God! | |
| Shield thy dear Church from the impending scaith, | 35 |
| Or, if the rod | |
| Must scourge it yet again, inspire and raise | |
| To emprise high | |
| Men like the heroic race of other days, | |
| Who joyed to die. | 40 |
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| Fear! wherefore should the Celtic people fear | |
| Their Church’s fate? | |
| The day is not—the day was never near— | |
| Could desolate | |
| The Destin’d Island, all whose seedy clay | 45 |
| Is holy ground: | |
| Its cross shall stand till that predestin’d day | |
| When Erin’s self is drown’d. | |
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