Читать книгу Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898 - Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa - Страница 7

I would not enter on my list of friends,

Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,

Yet, wanting sensibility—the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail

That crawls at evening in the public path,

But he that hath humanity, forewarned

Will step aside, and let the reptile live.

The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,

And charged with venom, that intrudes—

A visitor, unwelcome unto scenes

Sacred to nature and repose:—the bower,

The chamber, or the hall—may die;

A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so, when held within their proper bounds,

And guiltless of offense, they range the air,

Or take their pastimes in the spacious field,

There they are privileged.

And he that hurts or harms them there

Is guilty of a wrong; disturbs the economy

Of nature’s realm; who, when she formed them,

Designed them an abode. The sum is this:

If man’s convenience, health or safety interferes,

His rights and claims are paramount, and must extinguish theirs;

Else, they are all, the meanest things that are,

As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at first—

Who, in His sovereign wisdom made them all,

Ye, therefore, who love mercy,

Teach your sons to love it too.

The springtime of our years is so dishonored and defiled, in most,

By budding ills that ask a prudent hand to check them.

But, alas! none sooner shoots, if unrestrained,

Into luxuriant growth, than cruelty,

Most devilish of them all. Mercy to him

Who shows it is the rule, and righteous limitation of its act

By which heaven moves, in pardoning guilty man;

And he who shows none, being ripe in years,

And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall seek it, and not find it, in return.

That poem is in my mind, whenever I step aside, lest I tread upon a worm or a fly in my path. And here, from my school-book are—

THE SIGNS OF RAIN.

The hollow winds begin to blow,

The clouds look black, the glass is low,

The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,

And spiders from their cobwebs creep.

Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,

Old Betty’s joints are on the rack;

Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry,

The distant hills are looking nigh,

How restless are the snorting swine.

The busy fly disturbs the kine,

“Puss,” on the hearth with velvet paws,

Sits wiping o’er her whiskered jaws.

Through the clear streams the fishes rise

And nimbly catch the incautious flies.

The frog has changed his yellow vest,

And in a russet coat is drest,

My dog, so altered in his taste,

Quits mutton bones, on grass to feast,

And see yon rooks—how odd their flight,

They imitate the gliding kite.

And headlong, downwards, seem to fall,

As if they felt the piercing ball.

’Twill surely rain; I see, with sorrow

Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow.

Then, there is the little busy bee:—

How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower.

How skilfully she builds her nest,

How neat she spreads the wax

And labors hard to store it well

With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labor, or of skill,

I must be busy too;

For idle hands, some mischief still

Will ever find to do.

Those poems may not be exactly word for word as they are printed in the books; but I am not going to look for the books, to see if they are correct. That would be a desecration of myself and my story, as I have told my readers I am taking my writings from the stores of my memory.

Nor, must I run away from school either—to tell stories outside of school. I ran ahead in my classes when I was at school. The master would have a patch of one of our fields every year, to sow potatoes in. My father, on some business of his, took me with him to the master’s house one night; the master had two little girls, daughters; he was telling my father that I was getting on well at school, and that if I continued to be good ’till I grew up to be a big boy, he’d give me his Mary Anne for a little wife.

My grandfather and grandmother would come to mass every Sunday. They’d come to our place first, and let the horse be put in the stable till mass was over. I was that time such a prodigy of learning, that my innocent Nannie feared the learning would rise in my head.

I was put sitting up on the counter one day to read a lesson for her, and after I had finished reading, I heard her say to my mother, “Nellie, a laodh! coimead o scoil tamal e; eireog a leighean ’n a cheann”—“Nellie, dear! keep him from school a while; the learning will rise in his head.” Oh, yes; I was a prodigy of learning that time. My learning ran far and away ahead of my understanding. I was in my class one day, reading from the little book of “Scripture lessons,” and I read aloud that the mother of Jacob and Esau “bore twines”—“What’s that? What’s that?” said the master, smiling, and I again read that that lady of the olden time “bore twines.” I did not know enough to pronounce the word “twins,” and probably did not know at the time what “twins” meant. If the schoolmaster was teaching me my natural language—the Irish, and if I had read from the book—“do bidh cooplee aici,” I would readily understand that she had a couple of children together at the one lying-in.

My master often slapped me on the hand with his wooden slapper, but he never flogged me; though I must have suffered all the pains and penalties of flogging from him one time, for, before he struck me at all, I screeched as if he had me half-killed.

I was put into the vestry-room one evening, with five or six other boys, to be flogged, after the rest of the scholars had left school.

The master came in and locked the door, and gave the orders to strip. I unbuttoned my trousers from my jacket, and let them fall down. I commenced screeching, and I’d emphasize with a louder screech every lash of the cat-o’-nine tails that every little boy would get. I was left for the last. He caught me by the shoulder. “Now,” said he, “will you be late from school any more?” “Oh, sir, oh, sir, I’ll never be late any more.” “You’ll keep your promise—sure?” “Oh, yes, yes, sir; I’ll never be late anymore.” Then, with cat-o’-nine tails lifted in his hand, he let me go without striking me.

This school I was at was called the Old-Chapel school. It was built on the top of the hill field, and on the top of the Rock. Very likely it was built in the days of the persecution of the church, when it was a crime for the priest to say mass, and a crime for the people to attend mass. From the location of it, any one coming toward it from the north, east, south or west, could be seen. The watchman in the belfry house on the tiptop of the rock could see all around him. “The Rock” is a seashore hamlet, inhabited chiefly by fishermen. The hill field was one of my father’s fields, and often I went over the wall on a Sunday morning to look at Corly Keohane ringing the bell for mass. I had to be up early those mornings to keep the Rock hens out of the cornfield; often and often the bedclothes were pulled off me at daybreak.