THE QUALITY OF THE WORKS OF EDWARD DOYLE
Reading edition
The quality of Edward Doyle's work was appraised by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in the following article by Mrs. Wilcox which appeared in the New York Evening Journal and the San Francisco Examiner, in 1905:
Shut your eyes and bind them with a black cloth and try for one hour to see how cheerful you can be. Then imagine yourself deprived for life of the light of day.
Perhaps this experiment will make you less rebellious with your present lot.
Then take the little book called "The Haunted Temple and Other Poems," by Edward Doyle, the blind poet of Harlem, and read and wonder and feel ashamed of any mood of distrust of God and discontent with life you have ever indulged.
Mr. Doyle has been blind for the last thirty-seven years; he has lived a half century.
Therefore he still remembers the privilege of seeing God's world when a lad, and this must augment rather than ameliorate his sorrow.
He who has never known the use of eyes cannot fully understand the immensity of the loss of sight.
I hear people in possession of all their senses, and with many blessings, bewail the fact that they were ever born.
They have missed some aim, failed of some cherished ambition, lost some special joy or been defeated in some purpose.
A GREAT SOUL
And so they sit in spiritual darkness and curse life and doubt God. But here is a great soul who has found his divine self in the darkness and who sends out this wonderful song of joy and gratitude.
Read it, oh, ye weak repiners, and read it again and again. It is beautiful in thought, perfect in expression and glorious with truth.
CHIME, DARK BELL
My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry, With joy to my Creator, "It is well!" Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell My transport at the consciousness that I Who was not, Am! To be—oh, that is why The awful convex dark in which I dwell Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell. Antiphonally to the choirs on high! Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more Than consciousness my gift, this were to know The Giver Good—which sums up all the lore Eternity can possibly bestow. Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below.
I know a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor in the field of art.
When urged to take a different mental attitude for the sake of the reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the world as I find it."
He is an able-bodied man, in the prime of life, with splendid years waiting on his threshold to lead him to any height he may wish to climb. But to his mental vision, nothing is really "worth while."
What a rebuke this wonderful poem of Edward Doyle's should be to all such men and women. What an inspiration it should be to every mortal who reads it, to look within, and find the Kingdom of God as this blind poet has found it.
Mr. Doyle was in St. Francis Xavier's College when his great affliction fell upon him. He started a local paper, The Advocate, in Harlem twenty-three years ago and has in the darkness of his physical vision developed his poetical talent and given the world some great lines.
AN INSPIRATION
Here is a poem which throbs with the keen anguish which must have been his guest through many silent hours of these thirty-seven years:
TO A CHILD READING
My darling, spell the words out. You may creep Across the syllables on hands and knees, And stumble often, yet pass me with ease And reach the spring upon the summit steep. Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease Your upward effort, and with inquiries Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep! I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring— No matter, to its rim a few drops cling, And these refresh me with the joy to think That you, my darling, have the morning's wing To cross the mountain at whose base I sink.
But Edward Doyle has not sunk "at the mountain's base." He is far up its summit, and he will go higher. He has found God, and nothing can hinder his flight. He is an inspiration to all struggling, toiling souls on earth.
As I read his book, with its strong clarion cry of faith and joy and courage, and ponder over the carefully finished thoughts and beautifully polished lines, I feel ashamed of my own small achievements, and am inspired to new efforts.
Glory and success to you, Edward Doyle.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
