Classic Poem

It is pitiful and sharp to-day are the wounds of Ireland,
From Galway of white flaggy stones to Cork of the white strand;
The branches that were full of leaves and honey on the leaves
Are torn and stripped and shortened by the stranger to our grief.

It is long, O Royal Ireland, you were mannerly and kind,
A nursing mother to your sons, fair, hospitable, wise;
Now you are wine spilled from a cup beneath the stranger's feet,
The English-speaking troops to-day have trodden down our wheat.

The wild white fawn has lost the shape was comely in the wood,
Since the foreign crow came nesting in the yew-tree overhead,
Since the red East wind brought to our hurt the troop of foreign rogues,
We are drifted like the wretched fur of a cat upon a bog!