The First Subscriber

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 17, 3 May 1923, Page 30

The First Subscriber

TO THE MEMORY OF ALL THE FIRST SUBSCRIBERS, . AND PARTICULARLY OF THE PIONEERS LIKE HR. FLANNERY. He had fought in ’67, he had trembled to a tune, . He had waited in a hollow for the rising of the moon, When his slender dream was broken at the dawn of the day, He had slipped through his hunters and wandered far away. \.'H ".5; In the hold of the Dark Mary he brooded late and soon, Would the bitter rains forever drown the little black moon ? In the hold of the Dark Mary he would kneel at night and pray That his eyes might see it rising ere they closed in the clay. Thro’ the six long years that followed sweat was on his brow and hand, As he tore the loaf of living from a young and angry land, But his head was bent in grieving at the forge or at the plough, And he murmured in his hunger “Could I hear of Ireland now 1” Then one day a priest brought tidings that a Bishop in the South, A most proud and fearless Bishop, fierce of pen and sweet of mouth, Had begun to print a paper that should tell of faith and home To the exiles whom the Old World had sent out to work and roam. He became a first subscriber and .he never knew regret, And his troubled heart was lightened of its brooding and its fret. He read the Bishop’s paper on a spare night or noon, “Faith,” he said, “like me he’s waiting for the rising of the moon.” And.he treasured up the copies till the shelves groaned with their weight, But ho grew explosive sometimes “Och the times have grown sedate, And . the pike is out of fashion and the tongue is all the tune Ah, my children, none is looking for the rising of the moon.” His children grew and married and they smiled upon, his dream, Called it Dad’s old Fenian fancy,” but his eye would flash and gleam, He was back in a hollow with a pike and a tune, And a long sob for Ireland and the rising of the moon. He was dark in his eyesight when the. high Easter came, But his children read it to him and his heart leapt to flame. “God on high! This man too knows it! Let me die now and soon. Through my old blind lids I see it. It’s the rising of the moon.” —E. D.