“Father Ryan,” as he is familiarly called, was Alabama’s sweet singer. He was a born poet, and sang because he could not help it. Emanating from the heart, his plaintive strains go straight to the head. Yet he wrote only at intervals. Moved by the afflatus which only a poet feels, he would now and then take up his poetic pen and give voice to the minstrelsy of his soul. His verse is merely fugitive snatches of song springing from an imagination essentially poetic, and a heart subdued by religious emotion. In no sense was poetry a profession with this charming lyrist, for he himself tells us that his verses “were written at random—off and on, here, there, anywhere—just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry.”

Leaping warm from the heart and taking the wings of poesy, his thought throbs with virility, and makes an appeal to the heart of another with a force that is irresistible; visions of matchless beauty rose continually before his imperial imagination and sought vent in song.

Had Father Ryan subjected his thought to the lapidary finish of the professional poet, it is doubtful if it would now be so popular. He wrote as he was moved, the fervid thought seizing the first words within reach as a vehicle, and thus they fall on the ear of the world.

Simple songs his poems are, generally melancholy, meditative, pensive, the chief virtue of them being that they touch the heart. His thoughts seem to move in popular orbits in search of objects invested with the plaintive. It is not the weirdness so often met with in Poe that one encounters in the poetry of Ryan, but the touch of moaning, the sadness of a burdened heart yearning and burning for that which it has not, but hopes for and looks for in other realms yet unrevealed. Resounding corridors of gloom, dimly lighted vestibules, processions of mourners moving till lost in darkness, the chimes of melancholy airs heard by mystic ears, the muffled footfall in mysterious darkness, the touch of vanished hands, the outreach of timorous arms through the gloom for a kindred touch, the sighing of a soul for its inheritance—these are the elements which resound his verses through.

Much of his poetry savors of his theologic thought and environment, and, naturally enough, the object frequently pertains to that dear to the devout Catholic; but it is not about the substance of his thought that we here speak, but of his undoubted genius as a poet. Equal objection might prevail against much that is written by other poets, as, for instance, the substance of some of Poe’s productions, whose “Annabel Lee” is heathen throughout, but it is poetic in its every syllable.

The symbols and paraphernalia of his church, its worship, and all that pertains to it may be encountered in one way or another in the poetry of Ryan, but the undoubted genius with which it is wrought and molded into verse is that which fascinates the lover of poetry.

That Father Ryan would have been pre-eminent in poetry had he exercised his powers, seems clear. The vividness of expression, the subtle beauty inherent in his strains, and the deft touch given his thought are those of the genuine poet. He dwells apart from the ordinary drift of thought. The coloring of his thought was derived from numerous sources, and, emitted from the furnace of his heart, it was ever in transformed shape. The rattle and clatter of the rushing world fell on the ear of his soul with the element of melody. His emotions were pent up, and when they leaped their barriers, they gave to a responsive soul-world that which we call Father Ryan’s poems. His own soul, subdued to softness and gentleness by his inner reflection, sang itself in musical cadence.

His verse, always graceful and often brilliant, flowing melodious and limpid with the lilt of a landscape rill, borrowing delicate tints of beauty from the greensward and varied bloom which fringe its banks, and flashing back the light derived from heaven, makes an instinctive appeal to the soul of the reader, and has a sobering effect on his thought. From the source to the sea there is the same gentle flow with its occasional puddle and its subdued sound of ripple.

That which our poet does is more indicative of possibility than of final actuality. His strains are merely soft touches of the fingers of the musician on the keys of the soul, and yet they evoke such melody that one wishes the reserved force of the soul, whence they come, might have fuller and freer expression, that the slight thrill experienced might rise to rhapsody.

Most rare are many of the pithy passages to be met with in his productions. Did space permit, it would be a delight to enumerate many of these gems which glitter along his pages, but only one or two may here be indicated. On the occasion of a visit to Rome, he penned a fragment on “After Seeing Pius IX.” The first four lines are here quoted to illustrate the power of the poet derived from a mere glance of a man’s face, and in the last two of the lines quoted resides a power in metaphor rarely met with. Says the poet:

“I saw his face today; he looks a chief
Who fears not human rage, nor human guile;
Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,
But in that grief the starlight of a smile.”

The transference of the idea of the twilight and the gentle star meekly peeping through, to the struggle discerned in the features of one, is a picture that would occur to none other than a poet.

Equally striking is the beauty of the figure contained in his “A Land Without Ruins,” where he says:

“Yes, give me the land where the battle’s red blast
Has flashed to the future the fame of the past.”

Numerous are the striking pictures which he brings before the eye by one single stroke of the pen. Nor does Father Ryan conjure with the emotions merely to quicken and to stir for the moment. Indeed, he does not seem conscious of that which he has done and so greatly done; he merely sings out his soul in low refrain and leaves his melody lingering in the air.Ryan was patriotic to the core. In the thunderous years of the great Civil War his pen was busy with the ink of patriotic fire, but the aftermath of the war was more aptly suited to his nature. When in her night of sorrow, the South was a land of mounded graves, within which slept a generation of young heroes, while blackened chimneys stood sentinel over them, and while the monuments of the South were only heaps of charred ruins, and her once fair fields were littered with wreck and disaster, these appealed to our lyrist with unwonted force. The spirit of his Hibernian blood was invincible, and when embodied in a stream of poetic fire it illuminated scenes which else were dreary and desolate. From out the environment of darkness and ruin, his spirit sought the solace which the future must bring in recognition of principle, and thus he sang. Thousands who differed with Father Ryan religiously, honored him as a gifted singer. He has but scant recognition in the literary history of the country, but this is to be expected. He was largely a poet of locality, both geographically and religiously, and wrote not so much for others as for his own pastime, but Alabama owes him much as her greatest poet. Because of the genuine merit inhering in his verse, and because of the unquestioned worth attaching to his productions, he is easily the file leader of the literary spirits of Alabama.