THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 167

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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of the mighty dead, who with voice or pen or sword still fought the deathless battle in the midnight watches when the camp-fires burned low; and when our Irish Legislature throws wide its doors, it will be to a nation and not a coterie; it will be as the temple in which the spirits of the great from all the ages, in gown or iron mail—the O'Neils and O'Donels, the Sarsfields and Mountcashels, the Lucases and Grattans, the Emmets and Lord Edwards, the O'Connells and Smith O'Briens, the Davises and Mitchels, the Butts and Parnells of that long ancestral line will be able to claim oblivion for their blemishes, immortality for their deeds of fame, a kinship and a common monument of glory which moth nor rust shall never dim, whereto with bowed heads and grateful hearts will come every Irishman, no matter what his colour, blood, or idiosyncracies in minor matters may be—no matter even what may have been his faults in forgotten hours—to enjoy the heritage, and ennoble himself with the example of the men to whom it was not granted to hear the trumpet sound over the victorious battlefield.

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