[1188] The Mother
Guest poem sent in by Frank O'Shea <foshea@>
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow--And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.
-- Padraic H. Pearse
|
(1879-1916)
In any war, people are killed; soldiers are killed. Right now, there are
American and British and Australian mothers who wonder if they will see
their sons again. This poem is from a different war and a different time,
but the sentiments outlive time and place.
The poem was written the night before Pearse's execution by firing squad;
his brother was executed some days later.
It is customary now to decry the kind of patriotism which Pearse
represented. His sincere love for his country has been corrupted by the
savagery of the IRA, just as his idea of the necessity of blood sacrifice
(cf Yeats "There's nothing but our own red blood / Can make a right Rose
Tree.") has been corrupted by suicide bombers. Yet he was a young man of
great piety, a poet of some substance and an educator before that word was
properly understood. His oration over the grave of the old Fenian O'Donovan
Rossa bears comparison with any example of oratory anywhere. His sense of
fierce love of Ireland he inherited from his Irish mother; his sensitivity
to any form of injustice came from his English artisan father; if it is
possible to imagine the best of both nations, it might be P H Pearse.
Any search engine will list dozens of sites devoted to Pearse and his
writings.
Frank O'Shea
Links:
Biography: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/pearsehist.html
And a picture: http://indigo.ie/~1916/pic_pearse.html
Another poem written on the eve of the poet's execution is Poem #144,
which makes an interesting companion to today's
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From: Amit Chakrabarti <amitc@>
> In any war, people are killed; soldiers are killed. Right now, there are
> American and British and Australian mothers who wonder if they will see
> their sons again.
Not to endorse any particular political viewpoint, but right now, there
are also Iraqi mothers who wonder if they will see their sons again.
-Amit
From: "Mallika Chellappa" <mchellappa@>
Let's also recall Leon Uris book "Trinity" on
the IRA, where the first person character
is undoubtedly PH Pearse.
It is certainly a tragedy that these vexatious
problems persist, whether in the Basque region,
in Kashmir, in Ireland, in Palestine
or in Kurdistan etc. Strangely many are not related
to economics, but to ego.
"those who forget the lessons of history are doomed
to repeat them"
In this context, destruction of writings, monuments etc
does have the aim of rewriting history, and is thus
pitiful.
Mallika
From: Acynta@
>It is certainly a tragedy that these vexatious problems persist,
>whether in the Basque region, in Kashmir, in Ireland, in Palestine or
>in Kurdistan etc. Strangely many are not related to economics, but to
>ego.
What's so strange about that? If you think you are a victim, then you
will never get out of the cycle of revenge and self-destruction. I
wouldn't go so far as to say that a positive attitude will overcome
any/all obstacles, but I've watched members of my own (prosperous,
middle-class, American) family destroy themselves because they felt
sorry for themselves. No matter how terrible a hand you've been dealt,
what you do with it is up to you. The past absolutely cannot be
changed. The future is up for grabs. You can make it senseless,
violent, and unproductive, like the past, or you can do your best to
make it better. Self-pity is loathsome. There ought to be an eleventh
commandment: "Thou shalt not spend thy time thinking about how other
people have done you bad. Thou shalt spend thy time thinking about how
you are going to do good, and doing it." So there.
carlynn
From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@>
--- Acynta@ wrote:
> make it better. Self-pity is loathsome. There ought to be an eleventh
> commandment: "Thou shalt not spend thy time thinking about how other
> people have done you bad. Thou shalt spend thy time thinking about how
> you are going to do good, and doing it." So there.
Twelfth :) Eleventh is traditionally "thou shalt not get caught"
(popularised, but afaik not invented by Heinlein).
martin
From: <ruth@>
For me this is also a poem about really being a mother, and I marvel
that a man could have written it. Regardless of what "cause" a child
spends/loses their life on, then there must surely be a pride that the
child makes a decision based on thought and judgment. I'm sure an Iraq
or Palestinian mother may share my view.
Underneath every mother's feelings about her adult child is the love she
had for them at each stage of their growing up: you can't show it
because the child needs to be an adult receiving adult love. They can't
be burdened with the love you have for them as a 5 year old and the 9
year old let alone the baby against your breast, but it is still there
underneath.
"But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth"
Weary and joy, weary and joy!
From: "rosepearse" <rosempearse@>
Well, since Patrick Pearse was my grandfather, I have to agree with the
kind sentiment of Mr O'Shea. I beleive that Patrick was the best of many
things. My regret is that I only know him as a legend. It woudl have
been nice to have known him, even in old age, as my grandfather.
Regards
Rose Pearse. Keeper of the flame!
From: GB <hidden@>
I find this poem a tremendously moving one. Well done Frank for
submitting it. It has some emotional resonance for me as my mother won
a prize as a child at a Feis (or cultural festival) for reciting it.
She she would recite it for us as children, sometimes seriously,
sometimes almost making fun in her shy way of her own love for us as a
mother, and always always much to our delight. I also remember sitting
on the walls of the city of York in England about eight years ago on a
gloriously hot Summer's day reading a book of Pearse's poetry for a few
hours.But the poem would move me anyway even if it provoked no such
memories. The fact that Pearse could create such beauty at a moment
which must have been full of fear, loneliness and pain is a tremendous
tribute to his character, and to the human spirit. The poem is
remarkably prophetic as well. Pearse and his fellow rebels experienced
quite an amount of contemporaneous abuse for their actions and would
have been reviled rather than 'blessed' by many in Ireland at the time.
Their execution provoked revolution, and ultimately an independent
Irish Republic, but for the reasons Frank referred to, he remains a
controversial figure.
Following Frank's link out of curiosity, I also read Chidioch
Tichborne's poem (no. 144 ) on this list, written on the eve of his
own appallingly cruel execution. It is also a poem that I find very
moving, although it is a much more despairing piece. Still we can
empathise with his feelings on his own life cut unexpectedly short, and
on the transience of our lives on earth.
Well done Minstrels on your site. What a wonderful use to put the web
to!
Best wishes
GB, Ireland
PS Incidentally, I am puzzled by the e mail from Rose Pearse. Pearse
died without marrying and I am reasonably confident that he had no
children.
From: "Rose Pearse" <rosempearse@>
Obviously I know more about this than GB Ireland does, but I would not
discuss it on an open internet forum.