The Dusty Bookcase: McGee (D'Arcy)

07 April 2010

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

James McIntyre's warm tribute to the great Thomas D'Arcy McGee, assassinated 142 years ago this morning.

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

T.D. MCGEE.

Having been kindly invited as a member of the Mechanics' Institute some 25 years ago by the late Jeremiah O'Neill, Esq., to meet that gentleman in company of a number of our townsmen, when Mr. McGee was rising from the table the chair being new stuck to him and it being near a general election he very wittily remarked that he hoped the people of Montreal would be anxious to retain him in his seat as the people here are. We wrote the following lines at the time, the last verse was added afterwards.

D'Arcy McGee,

All compliment to thee,

The hope of the land

On your lecture so grand.

Though that is your forte,

Oh give us the sport

Of an hour of your chat,

Then we'll laugh and grow fat.

For none but the vile

Could 'ere cease to smile,

When near to thee

So brilliant and free.

Plant of green Erin's isle,

Long in Canadian soil,

May you take deep root

And bear much noble fruit.

Our hopes were in vain,

Alas he is slain,

By a crankish hand

The flower of the land.

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

D'Arcy McGee's Query (with a response)

A St. Patrick's Day Fragment

'IN MEMORIAM! The Hon. T.D. McGee'

A Poet's Angry Word With the Fenian Brotherhood

17 March 2009

A Saint Patrick's Day Fragment

It's no insult to describe Thomas D'Arcy McGee as a better politician than poet; he was, after all, one of our great statesmen. Still, I find this verse from The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier, 1869) has stayed with me longer than any of his speeches. That the poet was cut down by an assassin's bullet on an April evening lends weight.