Part 10

The extremely romantic life of John Boyle O’Reilly began on June 28th, 1844, at Dowth Castle, near the town of Drogheda in Ireland. His chivalrous nature and passionate love of country and of liberty were stimulated by the traditions and beauty of the surroundings and by the atmosphere of legend and story in which he was brought up by his schoolmaster father and clever and gifted mother. As a young man he was employed as a compositor in a printing office in Ireland and later at Preston in Lancashire. In consequence of his connection with the Fenian movement he was banished to Australia, whence he escaped to America in 1869, settling in Boston, where his ability as poet, journalist and orator was quickly recognized. Maurice Francis Egan has said of him: “In the United States, after adventures by sea and land, and tortures and suffering borne with a heroism that was both Greek and Christian, he found the spirit of freedom in concrete form. Our country satisfied his aspirations for liberty; he loved Ireland not less, but America more; he was exiled from the land of his birth, yet he found ample consolation in the country he had chosen.”

The life of the poet by James Jeffrey Roche, together with his complete poems and speeches, edited by Mrs. O’Reilly, was published by Cassell in 1891. A volume of selected poems was published by Kenedy in 1913.

THE EXILE OF THE GAEL

“What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sons of the Gael? What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail?”

“No treasure we bring from Erin--nor bring we shame nor guilt! The sword we hold may be broken, but we have not dropped the hilt! The wreath we bear to Columbia is twisted of thorns, not bays, And the songs we sing are saddened by thoughts of desolate days. But the hearts we bring for Freedom are washed in the surge of tears, And we claim our right by a People’s fight outliving a thousand years!”

“What bring ye else to the Building?” “Oh, willing hands to toil; Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil; Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field,-- The sons of a race of soldiers who never learned to yield. Young hearts with duty brimming--as faith makes sweet the due; Their truth to me their witness they cannot be false to you!”

“What send ye else, old Mother, to raise our mighty wall? For we must build against Kings and Wrongs a fortress never to fall.”

“I send you in cradle and bosom, wise brain and eloquent tongue, Whose crowns should engild my crowning, whose songs for me should be sung. Oh, flowers unblown, from lonely fields, my daughters with hearts aglow, With pulses warm with sympathies, with bosoms pure as snow,-- I smile through tears as the clouds unroll--my widening river that runs! My lost ones grown in radiant growth--proud mothers of free-born sons.”

“It is well, aye, well, old Erin! The sons you give to me Are symboled long in flag and song--your Sunburst on the Sea. All mine by the chrism of Freedom, still yours by their love’s belief; And truest to me shall the tenderest be in a suffering Mother’s grief. Their loss is the change of the wave to the cloud, of the dew to the river and main; Their hope shall persist through the sea and the mist, and thy streams shall be filled again. As the smolt of the salmon go down to the sea, and as surely come back to the river, Their love shall be yours while your sorrow endures, for God guardeth His right forever.”

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

In every land wherever might holds sway The Pilgrims’ leaven is at work to-day. The Mayflower’s cabin was the chosen womb Of light predestined for the nations’ gloom. God grant that those who tend the sacred flame May worthy prove of their Forefathers’ name. More light has come,--more dangers, too, perplex: New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex. The Fathers fled from feudal lords and made A freehold state; may we not retrograde To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade. May we, as they did, teach in court and school There must be classes, but no class shall rule: The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool. Though vast the token of our future glory, Though tongue of man hath not told such a story, Surpassing Plato’s dream, More’s phantasy, still we Have no new principles to keep us free. As Nature works with changeless grain on grain, The truths the Fathers taught we need again. Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw, And patch our moral leaks with statute law, We cannot be protected from ourselves! Still must we keep in every stroke and vote The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote; Our seal their secret: Liberty can be; The State is freedom if the Town is free. The death of nations in their work began; They sowed the seed of federated man. Dead nations were but robber-holds, and we The first battalion of Humanity! All living nations, while our eagles shine, One after one, shall swing into our line; Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide And bloodless order of their regicide; The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand Dividing farm from farm, not land from land. O People’s Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear; When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know; When artist minds in world-wide symbol show; When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise; When priests on grand cathedral altars praise; When pride and arrogance shall disappear, The Pilgrims’ Vision is accomplished here!

LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD

Majestic warder by the nation’s gate, Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory, Holding the tablets of some unknown law, With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,-- We stand about thy feet in solemn awe, Like desert-tribes who seek their sphinx’s story, And question thee in spirit and in speech; What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach? What vision hold those introverted eyes Of revolutions framed in centuries? Thy flame--what threat, or guide for sacred way? Thy tablet--what commandment? What Sinai? Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base, We watch the somber grandeur of thy face, And ask thee--what thou art.

I am Liberty--God’s daughter! My symbols--a law and a torch; Not a sword to threaten slaughter, Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch; But a light that the world may see And a truth that shall make men free.

I am the sister of Duty, And I am the sister of Faith; To-day adored for my beauty, To-morrow led forth to death. I am she whom ages prayed for; Heroes suffered undismayed for; Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!

I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me: Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free. One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be won? Freedom is more than a resolution--he is not free who is free alone.

Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the circling sun; Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when night is done. Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the rights are won;

Wrong shall die with the understanding--one truth clear and the work is done. Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety enslaved for ten; My word shall stand against mart and college; The planet belongs to its living men! And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a kindly shore, I am Liberty! patient, deathless--set by love at the nation’s door.

AMERICA

O Land magnanimous, republican! The last for Nationhood, the first for Man! Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid, Profound the sin to change or retrograde. From base to cresting let thy work be new; ’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew. To struggling peoples give at least applause; Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws; Like rays from that great Eye the altars show, That fall triangular, free states should grow, The soul above, the brain and hand below. Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone; That perils wait the land whose heavy throne, Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show, Is based on fettered misery below; That nations grow where every class unites For common interests and common rights; Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son, Till step by step the topmost height is won; Where every hand subscribes to every rule, And free as air are voice and vote and school! A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art Portray thy first, and Liberty will start From every field in Europe at the sight. “Why stand these thrones between us and the light?” Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”

Oh, this thy work, Republic! this thy health, To prove man’s birthright to a commonwealth; To teach the peoples to be strong and wise, Till armies, nations, nobles, royalties, Are laid at rest with all their fears and hates; Till Europe’s thirteen monarchies are states, Without a barrier and without a throne, Of one grand federation like our own!

FOOTNOTES:

The poem is given in the abridged form in which it is printed in the volume of O’Reilly’s selected poems, published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons.

This poem, which is here quoted in part only, was read at the reunion of the Army of the Potomac, in Detroit, June 14, 1882, General Grant being present on the occasion.

HANS MATTSON

Hans Mattson was the son of an independent freeholder and successful farmer of the parish of Onnestad, near the city of Kristianstad, Sweden. In an unpretending little cabin built by his father he spent the first years of his happy and peaceful childhood. On one occasion he was taken by his parents to see the king, who was to pass by on the highway near his home. In the midst of the confusion he did succeed in getting a glimpse of King Oscar I. In his childish mind he had fancied that the king and his family and all others in authority were the peculiar and elect people of the Almighty, but after this event he began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of his views on this matter.

After a year and a half in the Swedish army he decided to leave the service and try his luck “in a country where inherited names and titles were not the necessary conditions of success.” He says: “At that time America was little known in our part of the country, only a few persons having emigrated from the whole district. But we knew that it was a new country, inhabited by a free and independent people, that it had a liberal government and great natural resources, and these inducements were sufficient for us.”

From the time of his arrival at Boston until his final settling in Minnesota, his career is but typical of that of the many sturdy and enterprising pioneers of Scandinavian origin who have contributed so much to the building of the Northwest. He served as a colonel in the Civil War, and in 1869 was elected as Secretary of State in Minnesota. Later he was Consul General of the United States in India.