Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/540

Rh inner relation to actual experience in the narrator, which so intensifies the interest. The first is a lovely woman:—

"The second, a faithless woman, cowering ahove the form of her newly-slain paramour:—

"The third a chained woman—Mother and Motherland:—

"The fourth is a figure of a dead child:—

"In 'Muley Malek, the King,' Mr. O'Reilly bursts over the bounds of metre; but in the swing of his utterance there is a certain forceful rhythm, indicating an earnest endeavor to preserve some of the characteristics of song. In 'From the Earth a Cry,' however, all reserve is thrown off, and he launches formlessly forth. Walt Whitman chopped up Carlylesque sentences into lines at hazard, but rapidly debased the model. Mr. O'Reilly takes a high strident key, and follows Whitman's most ambitious endeavors. It is an eloquent invective, and its fitfulness and spasmodics have a certain relation to its grievous story of human oppression. It is as formless and as forcible as the onrushing mob it invokes. All that is, is wrong; what need of nice measuring of feet? It is not the measured tramp of an array that can be expected where the undisciplined millions rise to bear down drilled thousands.

"'O Christ! and O Christ! In thy name the law! In Thy mouth the mandate! In Thy loving hands the whip! They have taken Thee down from Thy cross and sent Thee to scourge the people;