Poetry Friday: "The Gifford Girl"

by Leonard Feeney, S.J.

Two dresses laid she by at night

And loosed her flowing hair,

She rose at dawn and stood in fright

And wondered which to wear.

Should it be white for her delight,

Or black for her despair?

She saw a widow weep—and now

She saw a laughing bride.

A little bit she laughed, but how

More bitterly she cried!

And the wedding-veil upon her brow

She very tightly tied.

She walked triumphantly at dawn

Across the lonesome vale.

Beyond the dim boreen and lawn

She heard a curlew wail.

She stood and tapped her fingers on

The door of Richmond jail.

That Richmond jail might open wide

She smote it with her hand.

“Who knocks?” the sleepy warden cried

And could not understand.

A trembling, girlish voice replied:

“A woman of Ireland!”

A hush that chilled the very stone

Upon the prison fell.

Young Plunkett straightened up alone

Within his narrow cell;

He bade the prison gong intone

And be their wedding bell.

O ye who know a lover’s grief

And feel a lover’s pride:

What gave this breaking heart relief

And cheered this drooping bride?

What said this lover in the brief

Last hour before he died?

Whatever lovers say—he said,

And then he passed along.

They put a hood upon his head

And bound it with a thong.

Then—England lost a ball of lead

And Ireland lost a song.

A hero and a soldier, too,

They buried him in lime.

Upon his wedding-morn they slew

A lover in his prime.

Into a burning ditch they threw

A poet and his rhyme.

O brood of riflemen, who vie

With brute and knave and churl!

On Judgment Day I prophesy

You'll hear his ashes swirl—

And God will make you stare it eye

For eye with the Gifford Girl!