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356 WILLIAM M’ELROY (fl.1806) William McElroy came from Fintona, Co. Tyrone and was, as O’Donoghue puts it, ‘a religious enthusiast’. His extraordinary The experience of manifestation: a poem to youth (printed for the author, Dublin, 1806) is charged with fanatical zeal and enlivened with copious biblical quotation. One poem, ‘To the proprietors of the new BOTANIC GARDEN, in concert with those of the new MOUNT-JOY garden, North-side, Dublin’ features a conversation between a gardener in Dublin, the church and Christ. At the end of the book, the reader is told that ‘he who reprinteth this book on better paper in the name of Jesus shall receive the reward of Jesus.’ McElroy’s poem on the bird-blinders, like many in the book, culminates in an apt biblical quotation, the source of which is cited in the text. The Blind Bird’s Mournful Lamentation to the Bird Blinders When shall that sympathetic tender power Find entrance in thy cruel bower; To thee O Man, to thee I speak, When shall thy feeling powers awake. That lovely bird that mourns its sight, Thy cruel dart prolongs its night; It chirping cries for help in vain, Its righteous plaints no entrance gain, Into thy hard unfeeling breast. With gifts of light heaven’s bounty blest, 10 Can man be just their precious sight, Their Sun to obscure, God’s gift of light; In plaintive strains their mournful song, Some human archer did them wrong. Who formed the eye shall he not see; They never sinn’d, then let them free, But like to Samson thou Philistine, Those ornaments God made, you blind.1 Two birds being sold for one farthing sings odd, Yet none is forgotten, not one, before God 20 Matthew x. 29.2 The story of Samson, the strongest of the Israelites, is told in Judges 16. Blinded by the 1 Philistines, Samson gets his (and God’s) revenge by pulling down the pillars of the Philistines’ temple and killing all those in or around the temple. Matthew 10:29 reads: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall 2 not fall on the ground without your Father. ...

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