Folly or grace

I don’t see why I shouldn’t celebrate the centenary of the Easter Rising all week long. Like a Polish wedding. So today let’s have a poem from Pádraig Pearse, one of its leaders.

Pearse, a native Dubliner and a Roman Catholic, was a teacher, lawyer and poet, in addition to his nationalism and political activism. He was deeply committed to reviving Ireland’s literary heritage, including its language, which had withered under English rule. In that service, he founded St. Enda’s School in a Dublin suburb, where Irish was taught alongside English. When he was shot at Kilmainham on 3 May 1916, he was 36.

Pearse’s poetic style is a little flowery for my taste, but I suppose it’s not unusual for its time. And he was trying to stir strong emotions in his readers. A lot of his stuff is around the sorrows of Ireland, like “The Fool”, which was written for the funeral of his friend and fellow Irish Republican Brotherhood member, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

It suited his own end, as it happens.

The Fool

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;

A fool that hath loved his folly,

Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses or their quiet homes,

Or their fame in men's mouths;

A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,

Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped

The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;

A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all

Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks

And the poor are filled that were empty,

Tho' he go hungry.

I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth

In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.

Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.

I have squandered the splendid years:

Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,

Aye, fling them from me!

For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard,

Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow's teen,

Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ's

And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?

The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,

And said, `This man is a fool,' and others have said, `He blasphemeth;'

And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life

In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,

To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?

What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell

In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?

Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin

On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,

But remember this my faith

And so I speak.

Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:

Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;

Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;

Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.

And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,

O people that I have loved, shall we not answer together?