Sean McDermott

Sean McDermott was one of the original signatories of the Proclamation. Tom Clarke was his mentor and both were members of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood). During the Rising, he also was staioned at the GPO. He was crippled and executed the same day and just prior to James Connolly.

A poem:

Awaiting freedom from my mother's womb

At Resurrection time, some glint of rebel steel

Pierced deep my soul, so deep

That fifty years have not erased the thrill

The names of Pearse and Plunkett, Clarke, MacDonagh, ConnollyCeannt and Sean Mac Diarmada arouse,

Of freedom born in blood.

Wresting freedom from a tyrant's hand

Had often been essayed on Ireland's soil.

Essayed at cost, at bitter cost

By men of eager hearts and giant mind, yet still

Each century brought fourthThe poets, princes of pen,

To thrill with their philosophy

A nation's captive hearts.

No lust of blood inflamed the freedom verse

To turn the ploughshare to the sword;

They unlocked hearts, e'en timid hearts

To dreams undreamt of within captive breasts,

And set vast floods of liberty afloat

Upon a sea too long content

With anchored hopes,

And flotsam fears.

Who can recall an Emmet or a Tone,

A Mitchel or a Davitt or Devoy,

Without a glorious surging of the blood

And anticipation of emancipation

From the long-remembered wrongs

Upon a nation's rights?

Just tribute must be paid by

Freedmen to felon's heirs.

Half a century ago our resurrection came

Heralded by another name, the name of Pearse,

An Apollo with a quiver of words,

Music-tipped arrows to reach the very souls

Of those who longed and longed for freedom's balm;

Gentle leader of a quiet fewWho braved a tyrant's might

To make a bondman free.

Let me praise him who close by Rossa's grave

Praised the virtue of a valiant man

From a heart and tongue pregnant then

With death-decision made for

Freedom's urgent birth;

A man whose spiritual eye could see the joy

Of a ladybird upon a stalk,

Or a rabbit in a field at play.

There were no deaths in Dublin on that

Easter day some fifty years ago-

Such music makers cannot die

As many mercenary soldiers do

With battles lost or won.

They have but set the music to a song

That ever holds us bound,

Yet leaves us ever free.

Like Pearse or Plunkett, MacDonagh and Mac Diarmada, Ceantt and Clarke,

And Connolly

DOMINIC CRILLY