SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Thomas Francis Meager (1823-1867)

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Searc's Web Guide to 19th Century Ireland - Thomas Francis Meager (1823-1867)

Thomas Francis Meager was born in Waterford and educated at Clongowes and at the British Military Academy at Stonyhurst. He joined the Young Irelanders and partook in the 1848 Young Ireland Rising after which he was arrested in Clonmel, charged with High Treason and sentenced to death. Meager's sentence was commuted to transportation to Tasmania (then Van Dieman's land) from where he escaped to America in 1852. In the United States Meager founded the Citizen magazine and published Speeches On The Legislative Independence of Ireland (1853). In 1863 he was sworn into the Fenian Brotherhood and during the American Civil War he organised an Irish Brigade in his capacity as Brigadier General of the 69th Regiment of the New York State Militia.
In 1866, following the failure of the Fenian invasion of Canada, Meager became Secretary of Montana Territory where he drowned in suspicious circumstances in 1867. Meager's poem I Love These Grey Old Walls was composed in Clonmel Gaol in 1848.©

Fenian Thomas Francis Meager (Centre)
Brigadier General of the 69th Regiment
of the New York State Militia with Officers of the Regiment

I Love These Grey Old Walls!
I love, I love these grey old walls!
Although a chilling shadow falls
Along the iron-gated halls,
and in the silent, narrow cells,
Brooding darkly, ever dwells.

Oh! Still I love them for the hours,
Within them spent are set with flowers,
That blossom spite of wind and showers,
and though the shadow, dull and cold,
Emit their sparts blue and gold.

Bright flowers of mirth! That widely spring
From fresh young hearts, and o'er them fling,
Like Indian birds with sparkling wing,
Seeds of sweetness, grains all glowing,
Sun-gilt leaves, with dew-drops flowing.

And hopes as bright, that softly gleam,
Like stars that o'er the church-yard stream
A beauty on each faded dream
Mingling the light they purely shed
With other hopes, whose light was fled.

Fond memories, too, undermined with sighs,
Whose fragrant sunshine never dies,
Whose summer song-bird never flies
These too, are chasing, hour by hour,
The clouds which round this prison lower.

And thus from hour to hour, I've grown
To love these walls, though dark and lonely
And fondly prize each grey old stone,
Which flings the shadow, deep and chill,
Across my fettered footsteps still.

Yet, let these mem'ries fall and flow
Within my heart, like waves that glow
Unseen in spangled caves below
The foam which frets, the mists which sweep
The changeful surface of the deep.

Not so the many hopes that bloom
Amid the voiceless waste and gloom
Strewing my pathway to the tomb
As though it were a bridal bed,
And not the pyre of the dead.

I would those hopes were traced in fire,
beyond these walls - above that spire -
Amid yon blue and starry choir,
Whose sounds play round us with the streams
Which glitter in the white moon's beams.

I'd twine those hopes above our isle
Above the rath and ruined pile,
Above each glen and trough defile -
The Holy well - the Druid's shire -
Above them all these hopes I'd twine.

So should I triumph o'er my fate,
And teach, in signs of tenderness, not hate,
Still to think of her old story,
Still to hope for future glory.

Within these walls, those hopes have been
The music sweet, the light serene,
Which softly o'er this silent scene,
Have like the autumn streamlets flowed,
And like the autumn sunshine glowed.

And thus, from hour to hour, I've grown
To love these walls though dark and lone,
And fondly prize each grey old stone,
That flings the shadow, deep and chill,
Across my fettered footsteps still.
© Searc's Web Guide 1997-2007

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