"A fair, sweet girl, with great, brown, wond'ring eyes
That seemed to listen just as if they held
The gift of hearing with the power of sight."
The two lovers, forgetting the sacredness of true human affection, had, with equal self-abnegation, resolved to give themselves to the church, she as a nun and he as a priest. He has given a touching picture of their last meeting:—
"One night in mid of May their faces met
As pure as all the stars that gazed on them.
They met to part from themselves and the world.
Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed;
Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears
Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each:
They were to meet no more. Their hands were clasped
To tear the clasp in twain; and all the stars
Looked proudly down on them, while shadows knelt,
Or seemed to kneel, around them with the awe
Evoked from any heart by sacrifice.
And in the heart of that last parting hour
Eternity was beating. And he said:
'We part to go to Calvary and to God—
This is our garden of Gethsemane;
And here we bow our heads and breathe His prayer
Whose heart was bleeding, while the angels heard:
Not my will, Father! but Thine be done!'"
The Roman Catholic training and faith of Father Ryan exerted a deep influence upon his poetry. His ardent studies in the ancient languages and in scholastic theology naturally withdrew his mind, to a greater or less degree, from intimate communion with Nature. His poetry is principally subjective. Nature enters it only in a subordinate way; its forms and sounds and colors do not inspire in him the rapture found in Hayne and Lanier. He not only treats of Scripture themes, as in St. Stephen, The Masters Voice, and A Christmas Chant, but he also finds subjects, not always happily, in distinctive Roman Catholic dogma. The Feast of the Assumption and The Last of May, both in honor of the Virgin Mary, are sufficiently poetic; but The Feast of the Sacred Heart is, in parts, too prosaically literal in its treatment of transubstantiation for any but the most believing and devout of Roman Catholics.
On the breaking out of the Civil War, Father Ryan entered the Confederate army as a chaplain, though he sometimes served in the ranks. In 1863 he ministered to the inmates of a prison in New Orleans during an epidemic of smallpox. His martial songs, The Sword of Robert Lee, The Conquered Banner, and March of the Deathless Dead, have been dear to many Southern hearts. He reverenced Lee as a peerless leader.
"Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed
That sword might victor be;
And when our triumph was delayed,
And many a heart grew sore afraid,
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade
Of noble Robert Lee.
"Forth from its scabbard all in vain
Bright flashed the sword of Lee;
'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,
Defeated, yet without a stain,
Proudly and peacefully."
After four years of brave, bitter sacrifice beneath the Confederate flag, words like the following appealed strongly to the men and women who loved The Conquered Banner:—
"Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;
Broken is its staff and shattered;
And the valiant hosts are scattered
Over whom it floated high.
Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it;
Hard to think there's none to hold it;
Hard that those who once unrolled it
Now must furl it with a sigh.
"Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory.
And 'twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust:
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages—
Furl its folds though now we must."