Mary T. Reiley's poems

Contents

Page.

Preface, . . vii

Memoir, .... ix

Preface

These poems were consigned to my care for compilation as they were left by the author at her early and sudden death. A few had been published, but the majority were in abstract books, or on scraps of paper, just as she had first written them with little or no revision from her after-thought. Only a few, and scarcely noticeable, alterations have been made by the editor. Some, perhaps, have been retained from loving recollections of the times and places in which they were written that the author's matured taste and judgment would have rejected. The woodcut which illustrates the "Indian Pipe" was made from the author's own drawing, and generously offered to her friends by the publishers of "The Pacific Rural Press" in which paper the poem originally appeared. Her last work she had prepared for publication except giving to it a name. I have called it

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as she left it, "Unnamed." A number of the miscellaneous poems also had no titles. Where the name seemed to grow out of the poem, or where I remembered what she liked, I have given names to such. Several I have been unable to name appropriately.

To the work I have given only the patient care of a great love, wishing that the taste of a poet and the skill of a scholar had been mine to give.

Ed.

MARY T. REILEY.

The unfulfilled promise of this bright young life is one of the sad losses brought by the yellow fever which desolated so many southern homes in the summer and autumn of 1878.

Mary T. Reiley was born at Blairstown, New Jersey, May 18, 1858. Her father the Rev. John A. Reiley was an earnest and efficient minister of the Presbyterian church. Her mother, whose maiden name was Ann Carroll, was until her marriage a member of the society. of Friends.

Mr. Reiley in 1866 removed with his family consisting of his wife and seven children, four sons and three daughters, to Oak Grove, a large plantation ten miles from Clinton, Louisiana.

May, as she was always called by her family and intimate friends, then seven years old, was the fifth child and youngest daughter. The childhood which she recalled in after years was spent in the sunny south. The flowers, the skies, the trees, the air the very warmth of which she seemed to love to her were rich in memories and freighted with fancies. As a child she was remarkable for her loving and lovable disposition, her loyalty to truth, the tenderness that would spare the smallest insect pain, her early fondness for reading, the rapidity with which she learned, and the readiness with which she recalled.

There are royal methods of passage over the common road to learning ; hers, the sw^ift easy flight of the meadow lark above the dust and toil of weary plodders. But nobler and better than the sweet song that cheered their way was the willing help and encouragement she gave to those who could neither sing nor fly.

She began io write when very young, but most of her early poems are without dates and many of them have been lost. There is a little poem addressed to her mother written at the age of eleven; "Weaving" was written at fifteen ; " Voices," begun at sixteen and finished three years after. Nearly all the

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poems published were written during the last three years of her life.

Her creative thought was remarkably spontaneous and under its control she composed with wonderful rapidity, showing on some occasions the rare power of improvising. During the recital of "Decoration Day' ' on that Day of Memories, a year ago, several lines of the poem escaped her mind and she improvised others, she alone knowing that anything was missing or made. "Heart's Desire" was nearly all written amid the noise and confusion of a fifteen minutes' recess at school. At one of the meetings of a literary .society of which she was a member, there were unexpected visitors present. The president was mortified on account of having a meager programme, and noticing Miss Reiley's pencil busy during the exercises ventured to call upon her. To the surprise and delight of all she read a witty poem describing and explaining the situation.

Many of the humorous things she wrote were so related to incidents local and temporary in their interest as to be unintelligible to the general reader.

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Her humor was fine and delicate, and, though not one of the strongest elements of her poetical power, hardly finds a sufiicient representation in her printed works.

Her last work " Unnamed" was written during the latter part of July and August 1878. When we realize that this work was done in the intense heat of a southern summer, during a few weeks after her return home following three years confinement in school, under the immense strain upon her sensibilities caused by the sympathies and anxieties occasioned by the reports of the approaching fever, and interrupted by her attendance upon her younger brother during a dangerous illness ; we can only wonder at the power God shrined for a little while in her slight form then called to its more fitting place with him.

Her education was conducted at home, with the exception of one year spent at a boarding school in Clinton, until, at the age of seventeen, in September 1875, ^^^ came north to attend the State Normal School at Trenton, New Jersey ; from which she was graduated June 27, 1878 with the highest hon-

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ors, having given in scholarship and original work evidence of being the most gifted student of whom the School has record.

Soon after her graduation she returned to her southern home. So eager and anxious was she to see the dear ones from whom she had been separated so long and the home she loved so much that friends who would gladly have kept her north until autumn consented to her going. No thought of the terrible fever, which did not appear in New Orleans until three weeks after, and which had never been in the neighborhood of her home, gave anxiety to those who held her dear.

The father died on the 30th of September, the eldest sister Miss Amy, on the 15 th of October, Mary T., on the i6th, and during the following week Mrs. Nesom her remaining sister, and her brother William.

Such is a brief record of the life that went out in the glory and promise of its twentieth year. But who shall write of what she 7vas ?

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" What practice howsoe'er expert In fitting aptest words to things Or voice the richest-toned that sings " Hath power to give thee as thou wert ?" Thine was the poet's gift of song; thine, the noble and pure in girlhood, the strong and true in womanhood, the faithful and fearless in Christian love.

Across the night of our sorrow and loss there lingers yet thy memory, dimmed by no regret, darkened by no doubt. Down the dreary way of the days that are to come, where the voice of singing is no longer heard, nor perfume felt, nor beauty seen, we peer into the gray, striving by faith to catch, far off, a gleam of the radiance of thy present, praying that it may our future be.

H. M.

UNNAMED.

LOVINGLY DEDICATED

TO

MARY I. VAIL,

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE PROMISE

OF

OUR SCHOOL DAYS.

UNNAMED.