And the poem ends with maledictions on the "light race, unworthy its good," who "like furies caressing the young hope of freedom, baptized it in blood." Other poems are of a more threatening nature, although the threat is always poetic and half-concealed. Read, for example, the song, "Lay his sword by his side." "Lay his sword by his side,--it hath served him too well Not to rest near his pillow below; To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell, Its point was still turn'd to a flying foe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yet pause--for, in fancy, a still voice I hear, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And it cries, from the grave where the hero lies deep, 'Tho' the day of your Chieftain for ever hath set, 'Oh, leave not his sword thus inglorious to sleep,-- 'It hath victory's life in it yet!'" The poem which is directly aimed at the Prince Regent is the most severe and most high-toned of them all. It is the one which begins: "When first I met thee, warm and young." The Prince's name is not mentioned, but the verses can only be understood when it is known that it is to him they refer. Erin, speaking as a woman, describes her belief in him, her faith in the promises he made when "young and warm" and her continued reliance on him even when she saw him change. When she heard of his follies, she persisted in discovering, even in his faults, "some gleams of future glory." But now that the attractive qualities of youth have departed, and none of the virtues of maturity have replaced them, now that those who once loved him avoid him, and even his flatterers despise him, Erin would not give one of her "taintless tears" for all his guilty splendour. And the day will come when his last friends will forsake him, and he will call in vain on her whom he has lost for ever. She will say: "Go--go--'tis vain to curse, 'Tis weakness to upbraid thee; Hate cannot wish thee worse Than guilt and shame have made thee." Wordsworth addressed declarations of love to England when she was victorious and great; Scott sang the praises of Scotland at a time when she was beginning to take her place as a flourishing nation by the side of a sister kingdom; but Moore addressed his heartfelt, glowing strains to a country which lay humiliated and bleeding at its torturers' feet. He writes:-- "Remember thee! yes, while there's life in this heart, It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art; More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers, Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours. Wert thou all that I wish thee,--great, glorious, and free-- First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea,-- I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow, But, oh! could I love thee more deeply than now?"