These, and perhaps other merits, will win for their author enduring fame.
For the future of Father Ryan's poems we need have no fears.
They will pass down through the ages bearing the stamp of genius,
impressed with the majesty of truth, replete with the power
and grandeur of love; these are the purest sources of poetic inspiration;
for both are attributes of the Divinity. Strip poetry of these,
and nothing remains but its mutilated relics and soulless body;
it becomes robbed of its highest glory and its most enduring qualities.
Though the South may claim Father Ryan as her son of genius,
whose heart beat in sympathy with her hopes and her aspirations
and of whose productions she may well feel proud, yet no section owns him,
since he belongs to our common country, and in a certain sense to mankind,
for the fame of genius is not controlled by sections
or circumscribed within limits; it extends beyond the confines of earth --
yea, unto eternity itself! It is proper to regard him in this light
as the heritage of the nation, for in the nation's keeping
his fame will be secure and appropriately perpetuated.
All sections will unite in doing honor to his memory,
which is associated with grand intellectual triumphs,
won by the union of the highest gifts of the Creator --
the union of religion and poetic genius; the former the source and inspiration
of the latter.
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