DEATH OF SCHOMBERG
‘Twas on the day when kings did fight Beside the Boyne’s dark water And thunder Roared from every height And earth was read with slaughter; That morn an aged chieftain stood Apart from mustering bands And, from a height that crowned the flood Surveyed broad Erin’s land
His hand upon his sword hilt leant His war-horse stood beside And anxiously his eyes were bent Across the rolling tide; He thought of what a changeful fate Had born him from the land Where frowned his father’s castle gate High o’er the Renish strand
And placed before his opening view A realm where strangers bled Where he, a leader, s carcely knew The tongue of those he led; He looked upon his chequered life From boyhood’s earliest time Through scenes of tumult and of strife Endured in every clime
To where the snows of eighty years Usurped the raven’s strand And still the din was in his ears The broad-sword in his hand; He turned him to futurity Beyond the battle plain But then a shadow from on high Hung o’er the heaps of slain
And through the darkness of the cloud The chief’s prophetic glance Beheld, with winding-sheet and shroud His fatal hour advance; He quailed not as he felt him near The inevitable stroke But dashing off one rising tear ‘Twas thus the old man spoke:
“God of my fathers! Death is nigh My soul is not deceived My hour is come, and I would die The conqueror I have lived! Four Thee, for Freedom, have I stood For both I fall to -day: Give me but victory for my blood The price I gladly pay!
“Forbid the future to restore A Stuart’s despot gloom Or that, by freemen dreaded more
The tyranny of Rome! From either curse let Erin freed As prosperous ages run Acknowledge what a glorious deed Upon that day was done!”
He said–fate granted half his prayer His steed he straight bestrode And fell as on the routed rear Of Jame’s host he rode; He sleeps in a cathedral’s gloom Amongst the mighty dead; And frequent o’er his hallowed tomb Redeedful pilgrims tread:
The other half, though fate deny We’ll arrive for one and all And William’s Schomberg’s spirits nigh We’ll gain or fighting fall!
