[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;"
but he did not turn from the ruin to seek renown from strange and
profitable subjects. As the polished Greeks, even in defeat, conquered
their Roman conquerors by their refinement, so this poet sang of
Ireland's sorrow and wrong till England and the world turned to listen.
In one of his melodies, which is full of pathetic apology to his
countrymen for his apparent friendship to England, he sighs in secret
over Erin's ruin:--
"For 'tis treason to love her and death to defend."
He foresaw even then the immortality of his verse and the affection of
future generations for his memory, when he wrote:--
"But tho' glory be gone, and tho' hope fade away,
Thy name, loved Erin, shall live in his songs;
Not e'en in the hour when the heart is most gay,
Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs.
The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains;
The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep;
Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,
Shall pause at the song of their captive and weep."
But this was not his entire work for Ireland and for true literature and
art; nor is it for this sentimental reason that his centenary is
observed throughout the world. In some countries we are able to see the
beginning of the artistic or literary life of the nation; we can even
name the writer or artist who began the beautiful structure; and though
the pioneer work is often crude, it merits and receives the gratitude of
the nation. Though Moore was an original poet of splendid imagination,
he undertook a national work in which his flights were restrained by the
limitations of his task. He set himself to write new words to old music.
He found scattered over Ireland, mainly hidden in the cabins of the
poor, pieces of antique gold, inestimable jewels that were purely Irish.
These were in danger of being lost to the world, or of being malformed,
or stolen from their rightful owners, by strangers who could discover
their value. These jewels were the old Irish airs--those exquisite
fabrics which Moore raised into matchless beauty in his delicious
melodies. This was his great work. He preserved the music of his nation
and made it imperishable. It can never be lost again till English
ceases to be spoken. He struck it out like a golden coin, with Erin's
stamp on it; and it has become current and unquestioned in all civilized
nations. For this we celebrate his centennial. For this, gentlemen, I
call on you to rise--for after one year, or a hundred, or a thousand, we
may pour a libation to a great man--I ask you to rise and drink--"The
memory of Tom Moore."