Poems (Ford)/To Mrs. Sadlier

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TO MRS. SADLIER, [On reading her splendid historical tale, "The Confederate Chieftains."']
Oh, thou whose genius-gifted pen Is as a potent, magic wandWhose touch awakes to life and power The buried heroes of our land,My heart goes out in love to thee, While poring o'er the breathing pageWhere grandly live and sternly strive The chieftains of a vanished age.
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Our great and glorious dead, who sleep In heroes' or in martyrs' graves,Thou bringest back to tell their sons How much they loathed the name of slaves,How their proud eagle-spirits scorned To stoop from Freedom's lofty height,And reared a wall of dauntless hearts Against Oppression's banded might.
Their grandly mournful story thrills Our hearts with mingled grief and pride,And who shall dare, because they failed, To say in vain they strove and died?None,—for the land that gave them birth, That holds their ashes on her breast,Remembering their noble deeds, In chains can never, never rest.
'T is given to thy hand to ope The secret chambers of the heart,To bid it bound with joy or mirth, Or cause grief's hidden founts to start;Oh, cold must be the breast in which Thy words awake no genial glow,And hard the eye that does not weep The Nation's idol—Owen Roe.
From the bright radiance thou hast flung Around the struggles of the Past, ​The Present grasps a ray of hope Upon the Future's path to cast;Oh, may God ever shield and bless The great, true heart and gifted handThat twine such deathless wreaths to lay Upon the shrine of Fatherland!

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