JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
MOORE, THE BARD OF ERIN
[Speech of John Boyle O'Reilly at a banquet held in Boston, May 27, 1879, in commemoration of the centenary of Thomas Moore. Mr. O'Reilly, as chairman of the banquet, sat at the head of the table, with Oliver Wendell Holmes on his right, and Mayor Frederick O. Prince on his left. The company numbered more than one hundred, and was a representative gathering, mostly of Irish-American citizens. The toast to the memory of Moore, with which Mr. O'Reilly's speech closed, was drunk by the company standing, the orchestra meanwhile playing "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?">[
Gentlemen:—The honorable distinction you have given me in seating me at the head of your table involves a duty of weight and delicacy. At such a board as this, where Genius sits smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should be observed in cosmopolitan fashion. But he was particularly the poet of Ireland, and on this point I may be allowed to say a word, as one proud to be an Irishman, and prouder still to be an American.
Not blindly but kindly we lay our wreath of rosemary and immortelles on the grave of Moore. We do not look to him for the wisdom of the statesman or the boldness of the popular leader. Neither do we look for solidity to the rose-bush, nor for strength to the nightingale, yet each is perfect of its kind. We take Tom Moore as God sent him—not only the sweetest song-writer of Ireland, but even in this presence I may say, the first song-writer in the English language, not even excepting Burns. The harshness of nature or even of human relations found faint response in his harmonious being. He was born in the darkness of the penal days; he lived to manhood under the cruel law that bred a terrible revolution; but he never was a rebel. He was the college companion and bosom friend of Robert Emmet, who gave his beautiful life on the gibbet in protest against the degradation of his country; but Moore took only a fitful part in the stormy political agitation of the time. When all was done it was clear that he was one thing and no other—neither a sufferer, a rebel, an agitator, nor a reformer, but wholly and simply a poet. He did not rebel, and he scarcely protested. But he did his work as well as the best, in his own way. He sat by the patriot's grave and sang tearful songs that will make future rebels and patriots.
It was a hard task for an Irishman, in Moore's day, to win distinction, unless he achieved it by treason to his own country. In his own bitter words:—
"Unpriz'd are her sons till they've learned to betray;
Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires;
And the torch that would light them thro' dignity's way
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires."
And yet Moore set out to win distinction, and to win it in the hardest field. The literary man in those days could only live by the patronage of the great, and the native nobility of Ireland was dead or banished. A poet, too, must have an audience; and Moore knew that his audience must not only be his poor countrymen, but all who spoke the English language. He lived as an alien in London, and it is hard for an alien to secure recognition anywhere, and especially an alien poet. The songs he sang, too, were not English in subject or tone, but Irish. They were filled with the sadness of his unhappy country. He despaired of the freedom of Ireland, and bade her:—
"Weep on, weep on, your hour is past,
Your dream of pride is o'er;"