The Irish standard., 1914-03-07
view left still, the risking of which
was the losing of his life.

1t is not Tor me, perhaps, to speak
kof his attachment to Sarah Curran:
tenderer hands than mine should pen
the lines of tribute: more sympathetic
lips than mine should recount her
story. Enough that it is gloriied in
the poetry of Moore and the prose of
Irving. I know we'll the place where
she is buried, and I have knelt at
Sarah Curran's grave in the little Pro-
testant Churchyard of New Market
in the County Cork. On the pedestal
of small marble cross the grass half
chokes a quatrain cut in gold-the
green of the grass and the gold of the
lettering-his colors over her grave
"* y where the sunbeams rest
When they promise a glorious NOR
row,
They'll shine DER her sleep like a
smile from the West
From her own loved island of sor-
row."
Besides the poetry of this attach
nent, there is a lesson conveyed to
every youth whose heart struggles be-
tween duty and love in the words that
Emmett wrote to a young friend the
night before the rising: "the stagnant
veil of inglorious ease is for those
domestic enamoured souls who are
content to pass their lives in inactive
worthlessness, and who wish to enjoy
affection without having merited love.
Mine is higher ambition. l must
make myself worthy the woman of
my choice. Heaven forbid that an
excusable passion should thwart the
design of my life, or cause me for an
instant to neglect my country's good
for the purpose of promoting my per-
sonal advantage" True to his love,
truer to his country: in the end a
guarded Jail and public gibbet, the
flutter of broken-hearted girls hand
kerchief from a coach-window, one
wild look towards the Wicklow hills
for the rescuing pixies from Glenma-
lure and-Emmet is no more.
No more? Oh, no, My sisters and
brothers, not so. Your presence here
tonight in distant Minnesota, "far
from the land where Our young hero
sleeps" is mighty proof that he still
lives. The martyr never dies: his
principles survive among the haunts
of earth as immortal as his spirit
among the stars. The desire of lib
erty, like the torch in the old Greek
fame, is transmitted on from hand to
hand. One runner may fail or grow
faint or fall off, but there are always
others ready to snatch the torch from
his loosening grasp and carry it a
stage further to its goal.
The eclipse of Emmett was Sue
ceeded by the star of O'Connell; and
though the great Tribune protested
totally different principles and relied
on moral suasion alone, still it never
should be forgotten for him that he
struck bold note in the Repeal of
the Union, and lifted the sunken
minds of his countrymen to a proper
sense of their lost independence.
Young Ireland was loftier still, more
Emmet-like, and the men and women
of the '48 movement light up black
and blighting page of hunger and of
cowardice, and their names are even
yet household words at the foot of
the Keeper mountains and along the
slopes of Slievenamon. The men of
81 were Graded in the principles of
48; and when their movement too
collapsed, it was but to be indicated
by the brainy eloquence of Isaac Butt
aud adapted to agrarian purposes by
the tactical genius of Charles Stew
art Parnell.
No use in blinking the fact that
from the purely successful point of
view our Irish revolutions during the
nineteenth century have been failures
failures in the sense that they did
not accomplish their immediate pur-
pose. Poor Ireland has tried in vain
to take her place among the nations
of the earth: in vain has she attempt
ed to write her young hero's epitaph.
I often wonder if we have been born
with double dose of original sin, or
if there is some organic disease in the
political constitution of the Celt which
comes to the surface only when he
strives for supreme things? Is it pos
sible that we have, as nation, been
reserved for some noble purpose, that
in Gods own good time we will &C
complish in full measure for our
Fatherland what we have already so
largely done for the world? How
true it is that so far Irish music has
produced matchless airs but no great
opera or oratorio; Irish art charm
ing designs but no grand structures;
Irish poetry exquisite lyrics but no
drama. If the Irish mind has so far
produced no epic, Irish history has,
alas, furnished one long epic, all
stained and gored with blood and
blinded with tears.
But let US not despair. A willow
bending before the storm, harp with
broken strings, legend, "Alas, my