# Life of John Boyle O'Reilly/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII.
IN April, 1881, died the great Tory Prime Minister of England, Benjamin Disraeli, less well known as Lord Beaconsfield. Through all his life, from the day when he first brought down upon his rash head the caustic scorn of O'Connell, to the end of his glittering career, he had been the enemy of the Irish cause,—not from any bigotry,—he was not sincere enough to be a bigot,—but because such was the policy favored by the Tory party. O'Reilly thus summed up the character of the greatest of modern political charlatans:
It was a great thing for a man inheriting the disadvantages of race, and—at least nominally—of creed, which beset Disraeli at the beginning of his career, to conquer in spite of them. England was still full of intolerance toward Jews when the son of the Jew, Isaac Disraeli, began to attract attention. He had to fight his way against that intolerance, and he fought it well. The barriers which obstructed his progress were overcome, one after another, by persistent, undeviating effort. The obscure son of the Jew, whose only claim to distinction ​was that he wrote the "Curiosities of Literature," advanced by sure degrees, till he gained the place of Prime Minister of England.
O'Reilly's place in literature had been safely assured by this time; it was recognized by two great centers of learning almost simultaneously. At the thirty-seventh annual commencement exercises of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, on June 21, 22, and 23, 1881, he received the degree of Doctor of Laws; in the same week, he was elected an honorary member of the Phi Beta Kappa, of Dartmouth College, before which he read his poem of "The Three Queens." In April of the same year he published his second volume of poems, through Roberts Bros., "The Statues in the Block," dedicated "To the Memory of Eliza Boyle, my Mother." The little volume of only 110 pages ran through four editions. It contained some of the most finely finished and musical verses that he ever wrote; among them "Her Refrain," "Love's Secret," "Waiting," "The Well's Secret," and that most tender and melodious of all his songs, "Jacqueminots." In it also appeared his powerful denunciation of social wrong, "From the Earth, a Cry," "Prometheus-Christ," and his most dramatic Australian poem, "The Mutiny of the Chains." "The Statues in the Block," his best effort in blank verse, and the poem which gave the book its title, contained two lines which were the author's favorites, for he most frequently quoted them when requested to write an autograph sentiment:
When God gives to us the clearest sight,
He does not teach our eyes with love but sorrow.
O'Reilly at this period looked much older than his years. A well-known picture represents him with the long hair and full beard, which he wore from 1874 to 1880. It was some throat trouble, probably a legacy of the old Dartmoor drains, that compelled him to wear a beard for ​several years. When he shaved it oflf in 1880, and clipped his flowing locks, he looked five years younger. Dr. Edgar Parker, the portrait painter, made a fine picture of him in the latter aspect; it hangs in the library of O'Reilly's house in Charlestown, where also is a striking bust of him by John Donoghue.
In October, 1881, the strained relations of Gladstone and Parnell reached a crisis. Mr. Gladstone had the Irish chieftain and other nationalist leaders arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainhara jail. The arrest was as arbitrary as their subsequent release was illogical; the attempt to intimidate the Irish people recoiled upon its authors.
"The precedent of O'Connell's arrest, with the consequent decay of the repeal movement," wrote O'Reilly, "may be remembered by the English government. But the world has changed since then; the very contrary will be the result now. The millions of expatriated Irishmen, three times as numerous as the population of Ireland, send to 'the men in the gap' a courage and firmness that will defy all pressure.
"The world is so united nowadays that every thrill circulates. Things can no more be done in a corner. Nations cannot in these times be strangled in secret. When England strikes Ireland with a sword to-day, or fells her to the earth and manacles her, throat and limb, humanity looks on—and amid that humanity are millions of strong, indignant men who belong by blood to the suffering country.
"England may imprison every public representative in Ireland. She may break up every public meeting of the Land League. Very well. Then she drives the people to secret organization—she plays into the hands of the revolutionists."
In January, 1882, there appeared in the American Catholic Quarterly Review a thoughtful article by O'Reilly, entitled "Ireland's Opportunity—Will it be Lost? "In a few sentences he reviewed the various efforts ​of Irish nationalists in recent times—the Young Ireland rising in '48, the Repeal movement of O'Connell, the Fenian revolutionary scheme, and, lastly, the Land League, " conceived in the brain of an Irish political prisoner in a Dartmoor cell, Michael Davitt,—a man of great natural power, with a conscientious hunger for thoroughness of work and understanding, who admitted to his own heart that Irish movements had failed to affect England because they had first failed to enlist Ireland." Referring to the famine of 1880 and the coercive policy of the Government, he said:
The arrest of Parnell and the other leaders—and even the lawless shattering' of the Land League in Ireland by armed and ruffianly force, have been futile work for the English Government. The arrest of Parnell differs from the arrest of O'Connell, because there are now, in this country alone, more organized Irish societies, and twice as many Irishmen as there are in Ireland.
And every thousand Irishmen exercising in America the power of their moral force are a leaven to be heeded more by English statesmen than the armed rebellion of the same men or their fathers in Ireland.
The Land League has succeeded. It has compelled the passage of a law that will lower rents, more or less. It has raised the Irish question into cosmopolitan attention. It has crystalized the national sentiment of the Irish people and their descendants in America, Australia, Canada and other countries. But above all its good results, it has nationalized the Irish farmers, traders, priests and well-to-do classes, and they stand now ready and waiting for the next act in the national drama.
It is time for the curtain to rise again. When the Land League, aided fearfully by the famine, began its agitation, its timeliness and force were acknowledged by all Irish parties. The Home Rulers virtually subsided, giving the newcomers their place. The Revolutionists looked on with unfriendly eyes, at first fearing that the land movement, which only aimed at a detail, would distract attention from the National idea. But as they watched, they saw that the new agitation was raising the farmers and tradesmen into activity, and after a time the Land League was left alone in the field to work out its purpose as best it could.
Now, it must be asked and answered: Where does the Land League propose to end?
Mr. Parnell's object for the organization, expressed more than a year ago, was the expropriation of Irish landlords—which means the purchase of the land by the government and its re-sale on easy terms to the ​Irish farmers. Ireland does not want this to-day, and would be most unwise to accept it. If England during the past two years had had statemen of first-rate quality, she would have speedily offered this settlement; and had the people of Ireland accepted her offer, they would now find themselves more inextricably bound to Great Britain than ever the act of Union bound them.
If the English Government purchase the land from the landlords and resell it to the farmers of Ireland, the world's opinion will hold these men bound to their contract. The legitimate outcome of the Land League is therefore not national. It was never meant to be national. On the contrary, it would be the doom of Irish nationality, at least for a full generation, until the debt of the farmers to the English Government had been repaid.
Some, and many, will say that Ireland—even in the case of such a sale— would owe England nothing, in view of the centuries of wrong and robbery. This is doubtless true in equity; but why make a contract at all? It will not help matters any way. Better to preserve the integrity of the Irish farmer, even though he should starve. If the present 630,000 tenant farmers, augmented by at least a million more, as they would be, were to agree to buy from England the land of Ireland, meaning to break the bargain by a revolution next year, their conduct would be, in the mildest judgment of other nations, deceitful and discreditable.
It is not necessary to do this. For the best interests of Ireland it must not be done.
"But," it will be said by some Irishmen, "the Land League means to abolish rent altogether." It means no such thing. It has never said so, nor has it ever so intended. Such a proposition is absurd, so far at least as the present Irish question is concerned. It is a social theory which no country has yet accepted. No sensible person expects poor Ireland, struggling for very life, to voluntarily burden herself also with a socialistic mill-stone that would probably sink the United States.
Therefore, if the Land League has only one legitimate purpose, and if Ireland has reason to reconsider that purpose, it is time to look ahead and take new bearings.
The aim of Ireland in doing this is fortunately assisted by time and tradition. The year 1883 is the centennial of the Irish Parliament obtained by the agitation of Henry Grattan. The progressive issue of the land agitation is a demand for a government of Ireland by the Irish themselves.
Circumstances never worked more fortuitously to an end than here. The Land League has accomplished its work so far as it can safely and wisely be accomplished. The whole people are aroused. The English ​Government, at its wit's end, is apparently ready to listen to a proposition from Ireland that will restore peace without dismembering the empire. The present Prime Minister and many other leading Englishmen have clearly so expressed themselves, and without damnatory criticism by any English class or party.
Ireland in 1882 ought to agitate for and demand her own government. No matter by what name the movement is called, whether Home Eule, Repeal or Federation. The result will be practically the same. The natural resources of the country will be worked and cherished by its own people. The official life will no longer be an alien and inimical network spread over the island. The insolent presence of soldiery and armed constablery will disappear. The dignity of a people upholding a nationality they are proud of will take the place of the servile helplessness of an almost pauper population.
We do not fear for Ireland's future in a federal union with England. Nature has given the lesser country inestimable advantages. The antitrade laws passed by England in the last century are proof that even then she feared mercantile and manufacturing competition with Ireland. The intelligence of commerce will steer its merchant ships into Ireland's southern and western ports, to avoid the dangers of the fatal English Channel. The unrivaled water power of the rivers—from whose tumbling streams even the flour mills have disappeared—will drive the wheels of manufacture into competition with Lancashire.
If the landlords of Ireland are to be bought out—and we see no other way for the farmers to become proprietors, unless the government drive the people into revolution—it is better that they should be bought out by an Irish rather than an English Parliament.
And if, after a fair trial of the Federal union, it were found that Ireland suffered by the bond, that she was outnumbered in council, harassed and injured by imperial enactments, that in fact it was an unequal and unbearable contract, then still there remains the ultimate appeal of an oppressed people,separation—even by the sharp edge of violence.
The next step for Ireland is obviously not revolution. She has been for the past four years a model to the world of intelligent, peaceful agitation. Her people have pursued their legal purpose with marvelous patience, tenacity and temper. They have not broken the law, under terrible excitements and constant presence of the flaunted arrogance and ruffianism of unnecessary military power. They have achieved the greatest of all triumphs in compelling their powerful opponent either to yield or to break all the laws that it had itself invented to oppress and hamper the weaker country.
A people with such political intelligence and fertility need not fear federation with England. If Ireland can beat her even under present ​disadvantages, she will assuredly hold her own under a fairer relationship.
The men who recently issued a Home Rule manifesto in Ireland were undoubtedly right. They struck the proper note exactly; but they did it with uncertain hand, for their utterance has already faded into silence, though it met with no serious opposition.
The people of Ireland are to-day without a national policy. The splendid Land League organization goes on grinding, but it is not grinding toward nationality. Its great-hearted work for the present winter is to protect the evicted families of farmers who refuse to pay rent because England has outraged even her own laws. But Ireland cannot go on forever fighting with all her forces against a minor evil. If she go on for six months longer, England will open her eyes to her opportunity, and bind Ireland in new hemp by the sale of the country to the farmers.
The late Irish-American Convention in Chicago might well have started the national proposition. Had that meeting spoken for an Irish Government in Ireland, with the Union repealed, and a federal union substituted, Ireland would have answered like one man. That meeting did not so speak because a few men antagonized the Home Rule idea, and declare that they will have nothing less than utter separation from England, with a republican and socialistic government for Ireland.
To obtain these two objects, Ireland must fight England with arms. She must seize all the. strong places, at present occupied by fifty thousand armed men. She must, in one month, put in the field an army of at least one hundred thousand men, equipped with engineers and artillery; England in the same time wllI land on her shores at least that number of soldiers. She must establish a fleet, to keep herself from suffocation, if not starvation. And she must fight out a desperate conflict for existence, without a hope of borrowing fifty dollars in foreign markets on her national promissory note.
What sensible Irishman favors this policy? What earnest revolutionist is prepared to wait until all this can be done before Ireland obtains a Parliament of her own?
The sooner Ireland in America speaks on this point the better. Many earnest Irishmen, among the leaders in Ireland, firmly believe that Irish -Americans are all blood-and-thunder radicals. One of the ablest of the leaders now in prison, recently wrote the writer that the belief is widespread in Ireland that the Irish-Americans will have nothing less than absolute "no rent" and ultimate revolution.
Such a belief is utterly wrong. Even the revolutionary party in America condemn as absurd the "No Rent" proposition. This party, too, sees that Irish Home Rule in no way conflicts with their own more consummate settlement.
​Another, and a very grave reason for an expression of policy, is that the best intelligence, both in Ireland and America, will withdraw from a movement that either cloaks its ultimate purpose, or has none. Already the Land League has suffered deep loss by the vagueness of its drift. One American bishop has publicly uttered his disapproval of an organization which he could not understand; and the Catholic clergy generally have, it is believed, a secret and a growing feeling in regard to the Land League, that they are dealing with an occult and uncertain organism.
To allow so great an organization to collapse through blind management and lack of purpose would be calamitous. To fight the landlords and support the evicted tenants is not a national policy—it is not enough. When the land question is settled, the question of an Irish Government for Ireland will be no nearer a solution than at present.
A demand for Home Rule by the Irish people, supported by their representatives in Parliament, will obtain sympathy in all countries, and particularly in America. The Land League has demonstrated its necessity to the world. It will give life to the magnificent organization which now has nothing to do but raise money. It will receive instant and thorough approval and support from the Catholic hierarchy and priests, both in Ireland and America, and from intelligent and conservative men, who have hitherto avoided all Irish national movements.
This frank treatment of the Irish question won the approval of the author's countrymen, with very few exceptions. The extreme nationalists appreciated the sincerity of his words, even while they did not agree with his policy. A few—they were very few—denounced the article as "traitorous." Of these O'Reilly said in the Pilot:
What need of new tongues! sure the Gaelic is clearest,
Like nature's own voice every word;
"Ahagur! acushla! savourneen!" the dearest
The ear of a girl ever heard.
The death of Henry Longfellow, in March, 1882, evoked this tribute from his brother poet:
The admiration of O'Reilly for Longfellow was sincere and abiding, for the gentle American poet had been his warm friend and admirer. To another friend, the genial essayist, "Taverner," of the Boston Post, I am indebted for the following anecdote:
On June 14, this year, O'Reilly read his great national poem "America," at the reunion of the Army of the Potomac at Detroit. In it he honored, as no other poet has done, the pre-eminent virtue of the American people, magnanimity in victory. Recalling the merciless triumphs of other conquerors, he wrote:
Not thus, O South! when thy proud head was low,
Thy passionate heart laid open to the foe—
Not thus, Virginia, did thy victors meet
At Appomattox him who bore defeat;
No brutal show abased thine honored State:
Grant turned from Richmond at the very gate.
Every passage of the patriotic poem was greeted with applause by the veterans. Even the impassive Grant himself, clutching the arms of his chair, leaned forward and smiled his delight. When the poet had ceased, Grant spoke to President Devens, saying, "That is the grandest poem I have ever heard." "General Grant, I would say so to O'Reilly in person," replied General Devens. He immediately did so, shaking the poet warmly by the hand and saying, "I thank you." This demonstration, of course, redoubled the applause of the witnesses.
Among the many tributes of praise paid him for this great poem were the following letters:
Danvers, Mass., June 19, 1882.
John Boyle O'Reilly, Esq.
Dear Friend: I have read with great satisfaction thy noble poem "America." The great theme is strongly handled. It has much poetic beauty as well as a noble enthusiasm of patriotism.
Thanking thee for sending it, I am very truly thy friend,
John G. Whittier.
Ambsbury, July 7, 1882.
296 Beacon Street, July 2, 1882.
My Dear Mr. O'Reilly:
I have never thanked you for your spirited and patriotic poem, which was indeed worthy of the occasion. ​All I have done was to send you a lecture which you need not acknowledge, above all, need not feel it your duty to read.
I am thankful that you are with us as a representative Americanized Irishman.
Very truly yours,
O'Reilly's prediction of the consequence of coercion in Ireland was literally verified. Early in March, Secretary Forster had made the foolish threat, "When outrages cease the suspects will be released." The "outrages," usually the most trifling of technical offenses, such as whistling "Harvey Duff" and other treasonable airs, did not cease; there was nobody, their leaders being in jail, to repress the discontent of the people. Unfortunately for the Irish cause, the inflamed people, hunted and harassed by the petty tyranny of constables and magistrates, were driven into secret conspiracy, the result of which was the awful tragedy of the Phoenix Park murders. Before that dire crime was committed, Gladstone had recognized the futility of his coercive policy, and ordered the release of Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly. They were set free on the 2d of May, 1882. Lord-Lieutenant Cowper and Chief Secretary Forster resigned their offices. Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish being respectively appointed to succeed them. An era of conciliation seemed to have opened; the true friends of peace rejoiced; but there were some reckless spirits to whom peace was the least welcome of conditions. Their leader and subsequent betrayer was James Carey, a man who had held the office of Town Councilor in Dublin and was for a time locally prominent in the Land League movement. Half a dozen desperate, unthinking fanatics plotted and carried out a scheme for the murder of Under-Secretary Burke, an official who had made himself especially odious to the people. On the afternoon of May 6, the day of his installation as Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, in company with Burke, left Dublin Castle and walked through Phoenix Park, to the Chief Secretary's Lodge. As they were crossing the path, a common ​hack-car drove up, and four rough-looking fellows jumping from their seats, rushed on the two men with drawn knives and stabbed them to death. They then leaped upon the car and drove rapidly toward Chapelizod Gate, where they disappeared. It subsequently transpired that the assassins had intended to kill only one victim, and that Lord Frederick was murdered either to silence him, or because he had defended his companion.
When the news of the crime reached America, nothing was heard but horror and detestation of the act. The Irish-Americans of Boston held a mass meeting in Faneuil Hall; it was called to order by Mr. P. J. Flatley, Hon. P. A. Collins as chairman. O'Reilly spoke as follows:
Resolutions in accordance with, the spirit of this declaration were passed, and a letter was read from Wendell Phillips, saying:
Boston, May 9, 1882.
Gentlemen: I am very sorry I cannot join you to-night in expressing our profound regret for the disastrous eclipse which has come over Ireland's proudest hour, and our detestation and horror for this cruel, cowardly, and brutal murder. No words can adequately tell my sorrow for the injury our cause has suffered or my abhorrence of this hideous crime—a disgrace to civilization. But it is by no means clear whether this black act comes from some maddened friend of Ireland or is the cunning and desperate device of her worst enemies. Let us wait for further evidence before we consent to believe that any Irishman ​has been stung, even by the intolerable wrongs of the last twenty months, to such an atrocious crime. Ireland's marvelous patience during the last twenty years entitles her to the benefit of such a doubt. Meanwhile, let us work patiently and earnestly to discover the real state of the case. It will be ample time then to analyze the occurrence and lay the blame where it belongs.
Very respectfully yours,
An informal meeting of well-known Irish-Americans of Boston had been held on the preceding day, at which it was decided to offer a reward for the arrest of the assassins, and the following cablegram was sent to Mr. Parnell:
To Charles Stewart Parnell, House of Commons, London:
A reward of $5000 (£1000) is hereby offered by the Irishmen of Boston for the apprehension of the murderers, or any of them, of Lord Cavendish and Mr. Burke, on Saturday, May 6.
On behalf of the Irishmen of Boston,
John Boyle O'Reilly,
O'Reilly's instincts were at fault, unfortunately, when he supposed that the dastardly deed had been the work of emergency men, or other Government tools. It seemed incredible to him that any men of Nationalist feeling could have been blindly infatuated enough to commit such a crime at such a time. The patriotic papers of Ireland were equally mistaken; the crime, like the murder of President Garfield a year before, was so utterly devoid of reason, viewed from the Nationalist standpoint, that the theory of its perpetration by emergency men seemed the only one conceivable. England's response was the immediate passage of a coercion law, although Mr. Gladstone himself had said two days after the tragedy, "The object of this black act is plainly to arouse indignant passions, and embitter the relations between Great Britain and Ireland." Michael Davitt, who had been released conditionally, after fifteen months of imprisonment without, trial, offered to go to Ireland and do whatever he could "to further the peaceful doctrines I have always advocated," and received as his ​only reply from Sir William Vernon Harcourt, "The Queen will not accord a full pardon to Michael Davitt."
The following July Mr. Gladstone carried his warfare on the Irish members to the extent of expelling Mr. Parnell and twenty-three others from the House of Commons, because they had "obstructed" the passage of his Coercion bill. The act was prearranged and the victims singled out. One of them at least, Mr. O'Donnell, had been absent from the House all night, and was therefore absolutely innocent of the alleged offense. Sir Lyon Playfair, when challenged to show in what way Mr. Parnell had obstructed the proceedings, said: "I admit, Mr. Parnell, that you have not obstructed the bill, or spoken much during its progress, but you belong to the party; I have therefore considered myself entitled to include you in the suspension." The Coercion bill was one of the most atrocious ever passed, even by the English Parliament; one of its clauses gave power to a judge, without a jury, to pass sentence of death on any person or persons for writing or speaking what he (the judge) might be pleased to consider treason. Mr. Gladstone sought to have some slight modification incorporated in the bill, but the Tories united with the English Whigs in defeating him. O'Reilly placed the responsibility where it belonged, when he wrote:
On July 20 the cause of Irish patriotism lost as devoted ​a lover as had ever lived, and sung, and literally consumed her heart away in its setvice, Fanny Parnell, sister of the Home Rule leader. Nearly a year previously she had written her greatest verse, prophetic in its spirit, entitled "After Death." O'Reilly, who had been her warm friend, wrote for her his beautiful poem, "The Dead Singer." In his paper he wrote:
There was something almost mystical in her nature and her life. Like the sacred Pythoness, unlike her own slight physical self, she drew her songs quivering with force and passion. Thinking of Ireland made her soul so tremulous with grief, and love, and hatred of the brutal hand on her country's throat, that her body long ago began to suffer from the terrible strain. Her friends warned her that she must stop writing, stop thinking; that she must go away from those who talked to her of Ireland, or brought her newspapers with Irish reports. She knew, too, herself, that her strength was giving way. It is not quite a year ago since the poem "Post Mortem" was written. She was measuring then with her soul's eye the distance to be traveled to the consummation—to Ireland free—and measuring, too, her own strength for the journey We shall never be able to read these lines without streaming eyes; this unequaled picture of national love.
"Ah, the tramp of feet victorious! I should hear them
'Mid the shamrocks and the mosses.
My heart should toss within the shroud and quiver
As a captive dreamer tosses ;
I should turn and rend the cere clothes round me.
Giant sinews I should borrow
Crying, 'Oh, my brothers, I have also loved her,
In her lowliness and sorrow.
Let me join with you the jubilant procession.
Let me chant with you her story;
Then contented I shall go back to the shamrocks.
Now mine eyes have seen her glory.'"
The Papyrus Club was old enough in this year to begin to indulge in reminiscences. Since its foundation, in 1872, it had had seven presidents, of whom one, its first and long-mourned ruler, Mr. N. S. Dodge, was dead. The surviving ex-presidents were Francis H. Underwood, Henry M. Rogers, John Boyle O'Reilly, William A. Hovey, George M. Towle, and Alexander Young. To these poetically styled ​"veterans," the club gave a reception and dinner on Saturday, April 1. O'Reilly read on that occasion one of his brightest humorous effusions:
TO THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN PRESIDENT.
We who have worn the crown salute you! Hail!
The dawn is yours, and ours the sunset pale;
You are the undiscovered land, while we
Are stubble-fields of old fertility.
We who have worn the purple! Ah, my friends.
We are the symbols of your latter ends.
We are the yesterdays; all our glory's scenes
Are pigeon-holed just o'er the might-have-beens.
We are the yellow leaves, the new year's vows
Left withering, yellow, on the young spring's brows,
Ours the glad sadness of the crown unmissed,
The rich wine drunken, the sweet kisses kissed.
Therefore, we hail you, who in turn shall wear
The heavy crown that left our temples bare!
You are the mine in which the gold-vein sleeps;
You are the cloud from which the lightning leaps.
Yes, friends, this honor comes to each in time—
I see the faces changing in my rhyme,
I see the wire-strung meetings year by year,
From which in turn the chosen ones appear.
First, pushing forth like corn in August days
Shoots the soft cone of Babbitt's budding bays.
Then follows one, pressed forward—modest man— Our Sullivan—(American for Soolivan).
Two years, at least, he rules the noisy whirl
Ere to his chair he leads the "Frivolous Girl."
Then Crocker comes to rule our board with law,
And Chadwick knocks to order, with a saw.
Here Dodd presides, a lily at his throat.
Here Parker sounds his mellow Gloucester note;
Here Howard, dusty from the Board of Trade,
Wields the deft gavel his own hands have made.
Here "Rollo" comes from Cambridge, led by Soule;
And so they come, a long and loving roll.
Forward, like fishes to be fed, they press,
Some must be first— the last are not the less.
Down years remote the brilliant line I see,
And every face turns hitherward—ah me!
How shining baits lure man as well as maid.
How hearts will hanker for the things that fade !
Across the coming century, thy line
Is stretched, Papyrus, and I see it shine
From that far end, while this end curtains drape,
For here stands Time, and winds the golden tape.
To you then, brethren, is our message Sent
To every embryo ex-President:
"We salute you. While yet you have us here
Treat us full tenderly, and hold us dear.
Receive us often at the banquet gay.
For our poor cup of wine, be proud to pay.
We are your veterans, scarred on breast and brow;
Let us run this Club's business—we know how."
And when thro' Time,—say forty years and nine,—
We get full fifty Presidents in line.
Behold, we can outvote the younger men;
And we shall bind them to our service then.
In their white faces on that day we'll shake
The rule and precedent that now we make ;
And we the old presiders, then shall speak.
Saying, "Young men, receive us every week."
And they will gnash their teeth, but eke be dumb,
While we enjoy our soft millenium.