THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 3

THE IRISH NATIONAL IDEA

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of steeples there was no message that could steal into the sanctuary of his heart like one note from the bells

Whose sounds so wild would
In the days of childhood
Fling round his cradle their magic spell.

It is just the same with all the other emotions of the Irish heart. You can no more impart the subtle enchantment of home to a parliament or a government in London than you could transfer the potency of the Shandon bells to a London belfry, even if you were to transfer the bells. I do not envy the mental structure of the man who could read a page of Irish history, or even cast his eye over an Irish landscape, without understanding that the Irish cause is not a mere affair of vulgar parish interests, but is woven as inextricably around the Irish heart as the network of arteries through which it draws its blood, and the delicate machinery of nerves by which it receives and communicates its impulses. That cause has all the passionate romance and glow of love. It is invested with something of the mysterious sanctity of religion. No knight of chivalry ever panted for the applause of beauty with a prouder love-light in his eyes than the flashing glance with which men have welcomed their death-wound to the fierce music of battle for Ireland. The dungeons in which innumerable Irishmen have grown gaunt and grey with torment are illuminated by a faith only less absorbing than the ethereal light of the cloister, and by visions only less entrancing.

The passion of Irish patriotism is blent with whatever is ennobling and divine in our being, with all that is tenderest in our associations, and most inspiring in the longings of our hearts. It dawns upon us as sweetly as the memory of the first gaze of a mother's loving eyes. It … continue reading »

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