The Real Good
'What is the real good?'
I ask in a musing mood.
'Order,' said the law court;
'Knowledge,' said the school;
'Truth,' said the wise man;
'Pleasure,' said the fool;
'Love,' said the maiden;
'Beauty,' said the page;
'Freedom,' said the dreamer;
'Home,' said the sage;
'Fame,' said the soldier;
'Equity,' said the seer.
Spake my heart fully sad:
'The answer is not here.'
Then within my bosom,
Softly this I heard:
'Each heart holds the secret:
'Kindness' is the word.'
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Night Thoughts 1
Have I no future left me?
Is there no struggling ray
From the sun of my life outshining
Down on my darksome way?
Will there no gleam of sunshine
Cast o'er my path its light?
Will there no star of hope rise
Out of this gloom of night?
Have I 'gainst heaven's warnings
Sinfully, madly rushed?
Else why thus were my heart strings severed?
Why was my love-light crushed?
Oh! I have hopes and yearnings—
Hopes that I know are vain
And knowledge robs life of pleasure—
And death of its only pain
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Love was True to Me
LOVE was true to me,
True and tender;
I who ought to be
Love's defender,
Let the cold winds blow
Till they chilled him;
Let the winds and snow
Shroud him—and I know
That I killed him.
Years he cried to me
To be kinder;
I was blind to see
And grew blinder.
Years with soft hands raised
Fondly reaching,
Wept and prayed and praised,
Still beseeching.
When he died I woke,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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To My Little Blanid
I told her a story, a fairy story,
My little daughter with eyes of blue
And with clear, wide gaze as the splendours brightened,
She always asked me—'Oh, is it true?'
Always that word when the wonder reached her,
She pictured beauty so grand and new —
When the good were paid and the evil punished,
Still, with soft insistent—'Is it true?'
Ah, late, drear knowledge from sin and sorrow,
How will you answer and answer true,
Her wistful doubt of the happy ending? —
Wise child! I wondered how much she knew.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Love, and Be Wise
NOT on the word alone
Let love depend;
Neither by actions done
Choose ye the friend.
Let the slow years fly—
These are the test;
Never to peering eye
Open the breast.
Psyche won hopeless woe,
Reaching to take;
Wait till your lilies grow
Up from the lake.
Gather words patiently;
Harvest the deed;
Let the winged years fly,
Sifting the seed.
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Poet and Lord
GOD makes a poet: touches soul and sight,
And lips and heart, and sends him forth to sing;
His fellows hearing, own the true birthright,
And crown him daily with the love they bring.
The king a lord makes, by a parchment leaf;
Though heart be withered, and though sight be dim
With dullard brain and soul of disbelief—
Ay, even so; he makes a lord of him.
What, then, of one divinely kissed and sent
To fill the people with ideal words,
Who with his poet's crown is discontent,
And begs a parchment title with the lords?
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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406 [unfinished]
I do not know the meaning of the sign,
But bend before its power, as a reed bends
When the black tornado fills the valley to the lips.
Three times in twenty years its shape has come
On lines of fire on the black veil of mystery;
At first, tho' strange, it seemed familiar,
And lingered on the mind as if at rest;
The second time if flashed a thrill came, too,
For supernature spoke, or tried to speak;
The third time, like a blow upon the eyes,
It stood before me, as a page might say:
'Read, read,—and do not call for other warning'.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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“From, that fair land and drear land in the South”
From, that fair land and drear land in the South,
Of which through years I do not cease to think,
I brought a tale, learned not by word of mouth,
But formed by finding here one golden link
And there another; and with hands unskilled
For such fine work, but patient of all pain
For love of it, I sought therefrom to build
What might have been at first the goodly chain.
It is not golden now: my craft knows more
Of working baser metal than of fine;
But to those fate-wrought rings of precious ore
I add these rugged iron links of mine.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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An Art Message
HE gathered cherry-stones, and carved them quaintly
Into fine semblances of flies and flowers;
With subtle skill, he even imaged faintly
The forms of tiny maids and ivied towers.
His little blocks he loved to file and polish;
And ampler means he asked not, but despised.
All art but cherry-stones he would abolish,
For then his genius would be rightly prized.
For such rude hands as dealt with wrongs and passions
And throbbing hearts, he had a pitying smile;
Serene his way through surging years and fashions,
While Heaven gave him his cherry-stones and file!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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To-day
Only from day to day
The life of a wise man runs:
What matter if seasons far away
Have gloom or have double suns?
To climb the unreal path,
We stray from the roadway here;
We swim the rivers of wrath,
And tunnel the hills of fear.
Our feet on the torrent's brink,
Our eyes on the cloud afar,
We fear the things we think,
Instead of the things that are.
Like a tide our work should rise—
Each later wave the best;
To-day is a king in disguise,
To-day is the special test.
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