Mr Patrick F. X. Ryan writes us from Christchurch: "It is now close on 14 years since I left Dunedin. I remember it well, for it was on the occasion of the sad obsequies of him who was Otago's joy and the Dominion's pride.
"Yes, as if it were yesterday I even now hear the cold, heavy, heartrending thud of the earth and the solemn chant of the minister as the mortal remains of that great high-minded Irishman and New Zealander, Thomas Bracken, were committed to the earth 'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.'
"And now, after 14 years, I am again in the Dunedin cemetery. I read the inscription on a thousand tombs, 'Erected in loving memory.' Many old friends are here. Many, too, repose under a massive column who were as unlike Bracken as I am to Hercules.
"And here I stand amid terraces of marble, in quest of poor Tom Bracken. Surely a stately obelisk, or perhaps more appropriately an angel, will point out to the pilgrim, e'en through the centuries, the resting place of him who mused in Maoriland while thousands stood charmed o'erwhelmed with the majesty of his soulful verses, as enchanting as the lute of Orpheus. But it is not to be.
"I must seek an official and he must look through musty volumes with a surprise as though I had summoned up Cesar's ghost. A friend conducts me to the place indicated.
"Yes, there I had stood more than a decade ago, murmuring a fervent 'Requiescat' for my idol. And lo! he is forgotten by his own. They received him in the heyday of his fame; now he is numbered of the dead he is forgotten.
"His name will be brought up in another generation and with as little ardour as tho' he reposed in the new world or in the Far East, instead of resting in his beloved Dunedin, where sacred should be his shrine.
"Why citizens of Dunedin; why, residents of Otago; why, all ye Maorilanders, is Bracken forgotten? Has the cold earth and the lapse of time proved such a filtering agency that you no longer remember the cheery, all too generous Irishman who has passed over that bridge which lies between two eternities?
"Are Bracken's virtues no more to be remembered? There are men of less sterling worth who have claimed a nation's honour, whose clay mingles with the dust of saints, resting in the shadow of the great Westminster, and poor Bracken, who drained the cup of bitterness to the very dregs, his life ebbing away in a poor cottage at the back of the Dunedin tramsheds, gave up his soul in a poor lowly hospital cot.
"People of Dunedin! Bracken is yours. In your prosiest moods as you wander to Ocean Beach and St Clair does it never strike you that these spots are rendered sacred by Bracken's footsteps? Irishmen!
"You who glory in the celebration of '98, you who rejoiced to see your fellow exiles in Australia spend 2,000 on a monument for Michael Dwyer, why stand you by and see your beloved fellow-countryman, Bracken unhonoured?
"I had almost said "dishonoured" when all acknowledge his worth and none there are who will not think well of you for your loyalty. People of New Zealand! Tom Bracken is your national poet - surely deserving of your highest honour.
"If I appear to write in scolding vein, pray forgive me. Such is not my intention. I write "ex abundanti cordis," and fellow Irishmen and New Zealanders will understand me.
"To them I leave the issue. I myself unfortunately, can in no other way forward a movement to immortalise Bracken. So as soon as your worthy citizens on the spot wax enthusiastic, and I know they will, so soon will I foward my mite - a cheque for 5 5s - to so worthy and self-commending an object."
- ODT, 21.12.1911.
