In this age of rondeaus and other feats in rhyme, it is pleasant to meet with a little book that abhors all verse tricks of the fin-de-siÈcle poets, and judiciously follows the old masters. Such a little book peeps at me from a corner in my library, marked in capitals, “Poems Worth Reading.” It was given to me years ago by its author, and as a remembrance, a few lines from the poem that appealed most to my intellect in those days, was written on its fly-leaf. It was its author’s first book, and was put forth with that shrinking modesty that has heralded all meritorious work. Of preface, that relic of egotism, there was none.

It was dedicated to one who was close to his heart, to

It had O’Reilly’s warm word to speed and gain it a hearing, a word that would have remained unwritten were it not that the little volume, of its own worth, demanded that the word but expressed its merit. Since those days, it has travelled and found a ready home. Its gentle humor has made it quotable in the fashionable salons, its quaintness tickled the lonely scholar, stinging notes against wrong and its brilliant biting to the very core of silk-dressed sham, bespoke a hearty welcome in the haunts of the poor and oppressed.

The volume was one of promise and large hope. Of it O’Reilly wrote: “Not for years has such a first book as this appeared in America.” This recognition was but a truth. The author is a true poet, not a rhyme trickster or a cherry-stone filer, that brood so thoroughly detested by O’Reilly. He has something to say, a genuine, poetical impression to give in each poem. His genius, as that of most poets of Celtic blood, is essentially dramatic. This may best be seen in that fine, man-loving poem, “Netchaieff.” Netchaieff, a Russian Nihilist, was condemned to prison for life. Deprived of writing materials, he allowed his fingernail to grow until he fashioned it into a pen. With this he wrote, in his blood, on the margin of a book, the story of his sufferings. Almost his last entry was a note that his jailer had just boarded up the solitary pane which admitted a little light into his cell. The “letter written in blood” was smuggled out of prison and published, and Netchaieff died very soon after. The poet’s opening lines, relating to the Czar, Netchaieff’s death in prison, show that the human interest of this poet swallows up all other interests. The human alone can heat his blood and rouse in impassioned verse his indignation. How finely conceived is the satire in these lines:

There are many startling lines in this poem, lines that would give our fairy-airy school of poets material for a dozen sonnets. “For the People” is another poem that shows the ink was not watered. It is full of truth, unpleasant to the ears of the well-fed and easy living, but truth nevertheless, painted with a bold and masterly hand. It is the critic’s way to call poems of this kind passionate unreasonableness, while an irregular ode to a cat or a ballade of the shepherdess is filled with passionate reasonableness. All which proves that these amusing gentlemen are unconsciously sitting by the volcano’s side. They have eyes and they see not; they have ears and they hear not. The prophetic voice of the poets who will sing from their inner seeing, caring not whether the age listens or hurries on, is lost on these so-called literary interpreters. The tocsin blast dies on the breeze, or speaks to a few lonely thinkers who catch its notes for future warning; the reed’s soft sensuous music is hugged and repeated by the critics and the commonplace. When the lava tumbles forth, then the singer whose songs were a part of him, passionate, conceived in the white heat of truth, may have the diviner’s crown. The critics and commonplace, in their suffering, remember the warning in these burning lines:

“Netchaieff” and “For the People” are poems with a meaning. Their author is a thinker, a keen student of the social problems that convulse our every-day life. He walks the city’s streets, and sees sights and hears ominous murmuring. He uses the poet’s right to translate these scenes and sights into his own impassioned verse. This done, his duty done. The Creator must give brains to the reader. If that has been done, the poet’s lines will fall fresh and thought-provoking on his ears. It will take him from Mittens, Marjorie’s Kisses, April Maids and the school of fantastic littleness, to man’s inhumanity to man, the burning wrong of our day. An Adirondack climb, but then the point of view repays the exertion. It is generally written that the author of Songs and Satires is a comic poet. A half-way truth is expressed. If by comic is meant humor, yes; all poets who are worth looking into have in a greater or less degree that precious gift. It is a distinct gain if the author is an artist and knows how to use it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put it on with a white-wash brush. It is a nice line that divides humor from buffoonery. Our author is a humorist of that school whose genius has been used to alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are not forged by the hammer of spleen on the anvil of malice, but the workmanship of love mourning for misery. His spirit is akin to Hood’s. His touch is light, but his poniard is a Damascene blade well pointed. Cant has no foil to set it off. “A Concord Love Song” is a charming bit of satire. I can well remember the effect it had on a teacher of mine, a proud sage of that school of word-twisting and transcendental gush. He sniffed and pawed viciously, a sure sign that the poet’s dart was safely lodged in the bull’s eye. Those who have, as a sleep seducer, read some of the Concord fraternity’s vapid musings on the pensive Here and the doubtful Yonder, will deliciously relish such lines as these:

It is to his later and serious poems that the critic must go to find the poet at his best. “At Sea” is a poem with a memory, inasmuch as it is the “embodiment of as beautiful a story of brotherly love as the world makes record.” The poet’s brother, Mr. John Roche, pay-clerk in the United States Navy, died a hero’s death in the Samoan disaster of March, 1889. Doubtless it was from this loved brother that the poet took his love for the sea, and the gallant deeds of our young navy. Here he is in his own field. “The Fight of the Armstrong Privateer” shows genuine inspiration. It has color and passion. The reader feels the swing of the graphic lines and a quickness in his own blood, while the tale of daring rapidly and gracefully unfolds itself.

James Jeffrey Roche was born at Mount Mellick, Queens county, Ireland, forty-six years ago. His father was a schoolmaster, and to him the poet is indebted for his early education. At a suitable age he entered St. Dunstan’s College, Charlottetown, Prince Edward’s Island, the family having emigrated there in the poet’s infancy. Here he finished his classics and showed his literary bent by the publishing of a college journal. Having the valedictory assigned to him, he hopelessly broke down. The present year he returned to St. Dunstan’s the orator of Commencement day, as he wittily remarked, to finish the valedictory that had overtaxed his strength as a small boy. After leaving college the poet came to Boston, entered commercial life, remaining in that hardly genial business for sixteen years. During these years his pen was busy at the real vocation of his life. He was for several years the Boston correspondent of the Detroit Free Press, and had been long an editorial contributor to the Pilot, before he took the position of assistant editor on it, in 1883. As a journalist Mr. Roche has few equals. His keen mind easily grapples the questions of the day, while his good sense in their discussion never deserts him. In a few lines he goes to the core. If his trenchant sarcasm punctures the bubble, his humor will not fail to make it ridiculous. It is not the windy editorial in our day that tortures the quacks, but the bright, pointed dart of a paragraph. It is so easy to remember, may be stored in the reader’s brain so readily, and used with deadly effect at any moment. A writer who knows him well has this to say: “As a journalist he combines two qualities not often found together, discretion and brilliancy. The former quality was well exemplified in his editorial course during the recent crisis in the history of the Irish National movement. He handles political topics ably, and in the treatment of the still broader social and economic questions, writes with the strength and spirit worthy of the associate and successor of that apostle of human liberty and human brotherhood, John Boyle O’Reilly.”

In truth, the one thing most essentially felt in this writer, whether in prose or poetry, is his sanity. There is no buncombe in the former, no mawkishness nor pedantic prettiness in the latter. His genius has no pose. So much the better for his fame and future. Mr. Roche’s prose works are: “The Story of the Filibusters,” a subject dear to a poet’s heart, and the “Life of John Boyle O’Reilly,” his chief and friend. This volume was the work of ten weeks, and that in the hours free from his editorial charge. It was a feat that few men could so successfully achieve. It had to be done. No sacrifice was too great for Roche to make for his dead friend. That his health did not give way after the sleeplessness, work and worry of those ten weeks, is the wonder of those who stood near to him. Despite the limited time allowed to Mr. Roche, his biography shows few signs of haste. It is well and interestingly written, a lasting memorial and a deep tribute of affection to one of the most lovable characters of the century. O’Reilly rises from this book as he was. Friendship, while giving what was his due, restrains all affections that might mar the truth of the portrait. His stature was felt to be large enough, without any additions that crumble to time.

There are those of us who hope that the poet, with greater leisure, will give to O’Reilly’s race a monograph to be treasured and read by each household, a monograph where the best in O’Reilly’s character shall be emphasized, and so lovingly set that those who read shall take heed and learn, while blessing him who gave the setting. The book as it is costs too much and is hardly compact enough for those who need the strong lessons of such a life as O’Reilly’s. In a smaller compass and at less cost, done in that delightful way so thoroughly shown in his art of paragraphing, the little book would be a guide-post to many a struggling lad and lass. And to the young of our race must we look and to the exiled part for the full flowering. As the poet, so is the man, cheery, unaffected, kindly and man-loving. He has no airs, lacks the melodramatic of the airy-fairy school. He does not pretend that the gift of prophecy is his, nor hint that it sleeps amid verbal ingenuities. He has a song to sing, a tale to tell, and he does it with all the craft that is in him. In person Mr. Roche is of the medium height, well-built, rather dark complexioned, with abundant jet-black hair and brilliant hazel eyes.

In concluding this sketch of a genuine man and true poet, I am tempted to quote the little poem he so graciously wrote in the fly-leaf of his “Songs and Satires:”