ANDROMEDA
Reading edition
By James Jeffrey Roche
They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone; The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own; The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone. Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her, Ye left her there alone! My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain; The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main: But, lo! a light is breaking of hope for thee again; ’T is Perseus’s sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming Across the western main. O Ireland! O my country! he comes to break thy chain!