Whence came the voice? Around me gray silence fall;
And without in the gloom not a sound is astir 'neath the sky;
And who is the singer? Or hear I a singer at all?
Or, hush! Is't my heart athrill with some deathless old cry?

Ah! blood forgets not in its flowing its forefathers' wrongs --
They are the heart's trust, from which we may ne'er be released;
Blood keeps in its throbs the echoes of all the old songs
And sings them the best when it flows thro' the heart of a priest.

Am I not in my blood as old as the race whence I sprung?
In the cells of my heart feel I not all its ebb and its flow?
And old as our race is, is it not still forever as young,
As the youngest of Celts in whose breast Erin's love is aglow?

The blood of a race that is wronged beats the longest of all,
For long as the wrong lasts, each drop of it quivers with wrath;
And sure as the race lives, no matter what fates may befall,
There's a Voice with a Song that forever is haunting its path.

Aye, this very hand that trembles thro' this very line,
Lay hid, ages gone, in the hand of some forefather Celt,
With a sword in its grasp, if stronger, not truer than mine,
And I feel, with my pen, what the old hero's sworded hand felt --

The heat of the hate that flashed into flames against wrong,
The thrill of the hope that rushed like a storm on the foe;
And the sheen of that sword is hid in the sheath of the song
As sure as I feel thro' my veins the pure Celtic blood flow.