Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/74

 build this monument. If we show that we are in earnest in our appreciation of Poe and in our endeavor in this movement, we shall not lack coöperation from our whole people of America and from all the world. But the burden and the glory of this work belongs to the South. It must be their splendid achievement. I know that we shall yet see it,—a superb work of art in a commanding centre of this goodly city of Baltimore, that is so inseparably linked with the name and fame of Edgar Allan Poe.

When Lafayette made his visit to this country in 1824, and came to Baltimore, he went with his staff to the Westminster Churchyard to the grave of his old Revolutionary friend, General David Poe, and kneeling on the ground, he kissed the sod, and exclaimed, "Here lies a noble heart!"

There will come a day, I believe, when a new and beautiful charity, in form like an angel, shall yet come to another grave that lies alongside of the old General's in that same cemetery, and kneeling down in immemorial atonement for the harshness of past judgments, shall print a kiss of loving pity on the sod above the grave of genius, and shall say, "God bless him, and forgive him. Here lies a noble heart!"