Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 35

CASTLES IN SPAIN

[Speech of Charles Eliot Norton at the "Whittier Dinner," in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and the twentieth birthday of the "Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers of the magazine, Boston, December 17, 1877. William Dean Howells, then editor of the "Atlantic," officiated as chairman. Mr. Norton spoke for James Russell Lowell, the first editor of the "Atlantic," then serving as United States Minister to Spain.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--We miss to-night one man to whom many names are equally befitting: the humorist, the wit, the wise thinker, the poet, the scholar, the worker, the friend--but the man who, of all others, should be here to do honor to our guest. We miss the first editor of the "Atlantic," whose comprehensive sympathies, wide as his vast, broad genius; whose cultivated taste, whose various and thorough learning gave to our Monthly, from the beginning, first place among American magazines and secured for it that deserved popularity which you, sir [Mr. Howells], are doing so much to maintain. The same qualities which made him eminent as an editor will make him eminent as the representative abroad of what is best in the social and political life of our country. No man could more truly exhibit, as comprehending them in himself, the high spirit, the n.o.ble aims, the varied achievements of a generous and large-minded nation--a nation not always so careful as it ought to be that its ministers accredited to foreign powers should be servants creditable to itself. But in the place that he now fills I cannot but regard him as, in a special sense, the envoy of the company gathered around this table. I believe that every one of us has, or at least has had, possessions in Spain that require to be well looked after; they are possessions of extraordinary, enormous, quite incalculable value, of which the t.i.tle deeds are not always as complete as we could wish. Lowell himself had large estates of this sort:--

"When I was a beggarly boy, I lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend, nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

"When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And I built with their roofs of gold My beautiful castles in Spain."

And so too, he, the friend of us all, whose presence makes us all glad to-night, and whom we always greet with all love and honor, has had possessions in the same fair land:--

"How much of my heart, O Spain, Went out to thee in days of yore!

What dreams romantic filled my brain, And summoned back to life again The Paladins of Charlemagne, The Cid Campeador?"

How many "castles in Spain not built of stone" has he dwelt in, and with what delightful hospitality has he welcomed us as guests within their s.p.a.cious and splendid halls! And even you, sir, for whose sake we have met to-night, even you, modest as your retirement has seemed to be in that quiet home, which you have made dear to the lovers of poetry and purity and peace, you have privately had your speculations in real estate in that land of romance, from which you have drawn large revenues. You will pardon me for reminding you of one of them, where--

"On the banks of the Xenil, the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with fruit of the tangled vine laden."

I have sometimes fancied that even the Concord River had its springs somewhere in the snowy Sierras of Estremadura, toward which the windows of the sage-poet's dwelling were turned, and from whose heaven-reaching summits he has so often caught the fresh airs of celestial breath. Few of us, indeed, have had the good fortune to add to their vast real estates in Spain any substantial articles of personal property, but one of us, rich in the gifts of Don Quixote's land, has actually a piece of plate, a silver punch bowl, which at times, when filled, has, I doubt not, given him a.s.surance of undisputed rights in the most magnificent castles:--

"A Spanish galleon brought the bar--so runs the ancient tale-- 'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail."

And even you and I, Mr. Editor, and all the rest of us, possess, as I have said, our smaller domains in that distant land, all of them with castles; but not all the castles, I fear, in good repair or quite habitable; and some of us would be perplexed to say if they lay in Granada or Andalusia, La Mancha--or to tell exactly how many turrets they had, or how large a company they could accommodate with good entertainment. Now, sir, such being the case, all of us having such real, but too often, alas! neglected possessions in Spain, I am not surprised that Lowell writes to me that he finds the Spanish Legation one of the busiest in Europe. He is to establish our t.i.tles, and the work is not without its difficulties. Let us send him our G.o.d-speed. May he come back to us to a.s.sure us, as he better than any other can do, of the henceforth undisturbed enjoyment of all our castles in Spain.

[Applause.]

RICHARD OGLESBY

THE ROYAL CORN

[Speech of Ex-Governor Richard Oglesby at the banquet of the Fellowship Club, Chicago, September 9, 1894, on the occasion of the Harvest-Home Festival. The Toast-master was Franklin H. Head, and the toast that he gave to each speaker was, "What I Know About Farming." In the report by Volney W. Foster, member of the Club, it is recorded that the Governor rose slowly, after being called upon by the toast-master, and was seemingly waiting for an inspiration. He looked deliberately upon the harvest decorations of the room and finally his eyes seemed to rest upon the magnificent stalks of corn that adorned the walls. He then slowly and impressively paid the following impromptu tribute to the corn.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--The corn, the corn, the corn, that in its first beginning and its growth has furnished aptest ill.u.s.tration of the tragic announcement of the chiefest hope of man. If he die he shall surely live again. Planted in the friendly but sombre bosom of the mother earth it dies. Yea, it dies the second death, surrendering up each trace of form and earthly shape until the outward tide is stopped by the reacting vital germ which, breaking all the bonds and cerements of its sad decline, comes bounding, laughing into life and light, the fittest of all the symbols that make certain promise of the fate of man.

And so it died and then it lived again. And so my people died. By some unknown, uncertain and unfriendly fate, I found myself making my first journey into life from conditions as lowly as those surrounding that awakening, dying, living, infant germ. It was in those days when I, a simple boy, had wandered from Indiana to Springfield, that I there met the father of this good man [Joseph Jefferson] whose kind and gentle words to me were as water to a thirsty soul, as the shadow of a rock to weary man. I loved his father then, I love the son now. Two full generations have been taught by his gentleness and smiles, and tears have quickly answered to the command of his artistic mind. Long may he live to make us laugh and cry, and cry and laugh by turns as he may choose to move us.

But now again my mind turns to the glorious corn. See it! Look on its ripening, waving field! See how it wears a crown, prouder than monarch ever wore, sometimes jauntily; and sometimes after the storm the dignified survivors of the tempest seem to view a field of slaughter and to pity a fallen foe. And see the pendant caskets of the corn-field filled with the wine of life, and see the silken fringes that set a form for fashion and for art. And now the evening comes and something of a time to rest and listen. The scudding clouds conceal the half and then reveal the whole of the moonlit beauty of the night, and then the gentle winds make heavenly harmonies on a thousand-thousand harps that hang upon the borders and the edges and the middle of the field of ripening corn, until my very heart seems to beat responsive to the rising and the falling of the long melodious refrain. The melancholy clouds sometimes make shadows on the field and hide its aureate wealth, and now they move, and slowly into sight there comes the golden glow of promise for an industrious land. Glorious corn, that more than all the sisters of the field wears tropic garments. Nor on the sh.o.r.e of Nilus or of Ind does nature dress her forms more splendidly. My G.o.d, to live again that time when for me half the world was good and the other half unknown! And now again, the corn, that in its kernel holds the strength that shall (in the body of the man refreshed) subdue the forest and compel response from every stubborn field, or, shining in the eye of beauty make blossoms of her cheeks and jewels of her lips and thus make for man the greatest inspiration to well-doing, the hope of companionship of that sacred, warm and well-embodied soul, a woman.

Aye, the corn, the Royal Corn, within whose yellow heart there is of health and strength for all the nations. The corn triumphant, that with the aid of man hath made victorious procession across the tufted plain and laid foundation for the social excellence that is and is to be. This glorious plant, trans.m.u.ted by the alchemy of G.o.d, sustains the warrior in battle, the poet in song, and strengthens everywhere the thousand arms that work the purposes of life. Oh that I had the voice of song, or skill to translate into tones the harmonies, the symphonies and oratorios that roll across my soul, when standing sometimes by day and sometimes by night upon the borders of this verdant sea, I note a world of promise, and then before one-half the year is gone I view its full fruition and see its heaped gold await the need of man. Majestic, fruitful, wondrous plant! Thou greatest among the manifestations of the wisdom and love of G.o.d, that may be seen in all the fields or upon the hillsides or in the valleys!

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 n.o.body, 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.bility 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 grat.i.tude 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."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Chauncey M. Depew, who, earlier in the evening, had spoken on the subject of munic.i.p.al consolidation.

[2] By Sir Archibald Alison.

[3] Burlesque Comedians.

[4] Henry Ward Beecher.

[5] John P. Newman.