The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1915-08-28

JOA1N Nv i i
IA IA There is no one who travels
through Drogheda. in Ireland, but sees
sDowth Castle; there is no one who
visits Holyrood Cemetery. in Brook
Il line, Massachusetts,, but may look up
ION q massive boulder towering in
Druidic majesty over the hallowed
4, field. Castle and rock, they mean
!. little, or mean much to the passer-by
! today. For the idle unitarian to
whom the present hour is the totally
a Of life they exist without much sig
4 nificance, even as all the precious
\ memorials of dead years; but to those
whose hearts are still warm with mem
cries for the yesterday. Dowth Castle
and the solitary monument are not
proftless things, for they speak in ST.
lent eloquence of the birth and death
4 of John Boyle O'Reilly. the patriot,
the editor, the poet.
II It is just quarter of century
ago, Is years on the tenth of August,
to be precise, that John Boyle O'Reil-
ly went out Of this life. He had seen
only As years, but they were full
years, every one of them, and they
sufficed to do the labor of the much
coveted three score and ten.
His Checkered Career.
To dwell for IL years in a castle,
the son of cultured parents; to become
apprentice in a newspaper office; to
dream the Fenian dream of free Ire
land; to serve as a soldier in the
Prince of Wales Own; to be arrested
for treason, to be found guilty and
sentenced to death; to have death ex-
changed for life-in-death in the cells
of English prisons; to toss with the
tide on a convict ship bound for Aus
tralia; to labor with the road gang
between the hopeless barriers of the
Indian Ocean and the untamed Bush;
to find freedom at last on New
Bedford whaler; to taste the welcome
of America; to be the voice of the
Celt on the platform and from the
editors chair of the Boston Pilot;
1 to be made president of historic clubs
and rendered honors by universities;
to be able to win by his genius and
/ his charm the admiration and friend
ship Of the leading men and women of
his day; this is a fascinating story,
and the contemporaries of O'Reilly
who wept at his untimely death must
love to cherish the tale as they learn
ed it in the long ago.
His Versatile Genius.
O'Reilly was an accomplished writer
of editorials, a forceful and polished
speaker, prose story-teller of worthy
achievement, but above all things he
was poet. Even in his prose work
there is an underlying and pervading
spirit Of posey that will not be denied
utterance, voice of love or of sorrow,
q note Of lyric grace or of dirge-
full pathos, gladdening vision or a
dream of tears wept in some past day
of remembrance. And so one turns
to his poems to find his true soul
singing and the door of his heart wide
open.
II In any judgment of his worth 1t
must be remembered that he died, If
not In the Lycidas youthhood, at all
events at the time when his poetic
spirit was wooing fuller moods of ex-
preston, and following the CLEAN more
surely in the quest for the ultimate
goal Had he lived, he might have
consistently excelled his own best and
the best work of his contemporaries,
but even in the short years of his toll
ing he wonderfully gave Of his heart
\ and his mind and his soul, and in the
/. written heritage there fingers yet
more than the sweet aroma of a once
: fair thought, more than the cherished
4 recollection of vanished spirit; rath
H or the voice itself of the singer Of
. songs, grown rich and mellow and
warm with the passing of the years.
RELEASED JANUARY, 1873.
BY John Boyle O'Reilly.
On January S, 1878, three of the
Irish political prisoners who had beer
confined since 1866, were set at lib
4 erty. The released men were re
ceived by their fellow countrymen II
4 London. "They are WE'LL" said tn,
II report, "but they look prematurel!
/. old" !