And what vision of life had Thomas MacDonagh? We know, for it is in his poem _Wishes For My Son_: But I found no enemy, No man in a world of wrong, That Christ’s word of Charity Did not render clean and strong— Who was I to judge my kind, Blindest groper of the blind? God to you may give the sight And the clear undoubting strength Wars to knit for single right, Freedom’s war to knit at length; And to win, through wrath and strife, To the sequel of my life. But for you, so small and young, Born of Saint Cecilia’s Day, I in more harmonious song Now for nearer joys should pray— Simple joys: the natural growth Of your childhood and your youth, Courage, innocence, and truth: These for you, so small and young, In your hand and heart and tongue. And we know the vision of life that Joseph Plunkett had—it was the same vision that the great mystics and the great religious had. It is in his poem _I See His Blood Upon the Roses_: I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies. I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice—and carven by his power Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree. These three men had a vision for their country that could not be expressed in a proclamation, no matter how nobly worded that proclamation might be. Padraic Pearse gave all his thought and all his effort to bring back a chivalry to Ireland—the Heroic Age of Celtic History, when, as he said, “the greatest honor was for the hero with the most childlike heart, for the King who had the largest pity, and for the poet who visioned the truest image of beauty.” The first thing you saw when you entered his school in Cullenswood House was a fresco representing the boy Cuchullain taking arms. The Druid has warned him that the youth who takes arms that day will make his name famous, but will have a short life. And written round the fresco, in the old Irish words, was Cuchullain’s answer, “I care not if my life have only the span of a day and a night if my deeds be spoken of by the men of Ireland.” This was the spirit that Padraic Pearse sought to kindle in his boys—this was the spirit that he tried to bring back again into Ireland.