Echoes 1 Patrick, you chatter too loud And lift your crozier too high, Your stick would be kindling soon If my son Osgar were by. If my son Osgar and God Wrestled it out on the hill And I saw Osgar go down I would say your God fought well. How can the Lord you praise Or his mild priests singing a tune Be better than Fiunn the fighter, Generous, faultless Fiunn? There never sat priest in church A doleful psalm to raise Better spoken than these, Marred by a hundred frays. What you and our monks proclaim The law of the King of Grace, That was the Fenians’ law, His home is their dwelling-place. If happier house than heaven There be, above or below, ’Tis there my master, Fiunn, And his fighting men will go. Ah, priest, if you saw the Fenians Filling the strand beneath, Or gathered in streamy Naas You would praise them with every breath. Patrick, ask of your God Does he remember their might! Or has he seen, east or west, Better men in a fight? Or known in his own land Above the stars and the moon, For wisdom, courage, and strength A man that was like to Fiunn? O'Connor, Frank; Three Old Brothers and Other Poems; 1936; London; Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.; p.32-33