It was the Saxon minister, he said unto himself,
  I’ll never have a moment’s peace till Doolan’s on the shelf—­
  So bid them make a warrant out and send it by the mail,
  To put that daring patriot in dark Kilmainham gaol.

  The minions of authority, that document they wrote,
  And Mr Buckshot took the thing upon the Dublin boat: 
  Och! sorra much he feared the waves, incessantly that roar,
  For deeper flows the sea of blood he shed on Ireland’s shore!

  But the hero slept unconscious still—­tis kilt he was with work,
  Haranguing of the multitudes in Waterford and Cork,—­
  Till Buckshot and the polis came and rang the front door bell
  Disturbing of his slumbers sweet in Morrison’s Hotel.

  Then out and spake brave Morrison—­“Get up, yer sowl, and run!”
  (O bright shall shine on History’s page the name of Morrison!)
  “To see the light of Erin quenched I never could endure: 
  Slip on your boots—­I’ll let yez out upon the kitchen doore!”

  But proudly flashed the patriot’s eye and he sternly answered—­“No! 
  I’ll never turn a craven back upon my country’s foe: 
  Doolan aboo, for Liberty! . . . and anyhow” (says he)
  “The Government’s locked the kitchen-door and taken away the key.”

  They seized him and they fettered him, those minions of the Law,
  (’Twas Pat the Boots was looking on, and told me what he saw)—­
  But sorra step that Uncrowned King would leave the place, until
  A ten per cent reduction he had got upon his bill.

  Had I been there with odds to aid—­say twenty men to one—­
  It stirs my heart to think upon the deeds I might have done! 
  I wouldn’t then be telling you the melancholy tale
  How Ireland’s pride imprisoned lies in dark Kilmainham gaol.

  Yet weep not, Erin, for thy son! ’tis he that’s doing well,
  For Ireland’s thousands feed him there within his dungeon cell,—­
  And if by chance he eats too much and his health begins to fail,
  The Government then will let him out from black Kilmainham gaol!

  “THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN”

  (1890)

  Oh, wanst I was a tinant, an’ I wisht I was one stilt,
  With my cow an’ pig an’ praties, an’ my cabin on the hill! 
  ‘Twas plinty then I had to drink an’ plinty too to ate,
  And the childer had employment on the Ponsonby estate.

  It was in Tipperary town, as down the street I went,
  I met with Mr Blarnigan, that sits in Parliament: 
  ‘Tis he that has the eloquence!  An’ “Pay no rint,” says he,
  “For that’s the way you’ll get your land, an’ set the country free.”

  I’d paid my rint—­sure, ’twas rejuiced—­before the rows began,
  An’ the agent that was in it was a dacent kind of man;
  But parties kem by moonlight now, and tould me I must not,
  And if I paid it any more they’d surely have me shot.