Oh Ireland My First And Only Love

It Is As Painful Perhaps To Be Awakened From A Vision As To Be Born.

Secrets, Silent, Stony Sit In The Dark Palaces Of Both Our Hearts: Secrets Weary Of Their Tyranny: Tyrants Willing To Be Dethroned.

Every Life Is In Many Days, Day After Day. We Walk Through Ourselves, Meeting Robbers, Ghosts, Giants, Old Men, Young Men, Wives, Widows, Brothers-in-love. But Always Meeting Ourselves.

I Will Tell You What I Will Do And What I Will Not Do. I Will Not Serve That In Which I No Longer Believe, Whether It Calls Itself My Home, My Fatherland, Or My Church: And I Will Try To Express Myself In Some Mode Of Life Or Art As Freely As I Can And As Wholly As I Can, Using For My Defense The Only Arms I Allow Myself To Use -- Silence, Exile, And Cunning.

Every Age Must Look For Its Sanction To Its Poetry And Philosophy, For In These The Human Mind, As It Looks Backward Or Forward, Attains To An Eternal State.