Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/347

 10 s. VIL APRIL is, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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mourning for President Garfield, who had died two days previously. On receiving the news Longfellow wrote to his friend Greene :

" Dante's line is running in my mind,

E venni dal martirio a questa pace. And what a martyrdom ! Twelve weeks of pain and struggle for life at last are ended."

In the autumn of 1881 the poet suffered much from nervous prostration ; but he did not dread the coming winter, as the thought brought with it a sense of rest and seclusion. In wishing his friend Greene a merry Christmas, he wrote : " Mine, I am sorry to say, is not a merry one. I don't get strength yet, and consequently don't get well."

The new year opened without improve- ment, and he was forced to decline the public reception offered to him on his birthday by the authorities of Portland, his native city. The few friends who saw him at home on that day remarked how well and cheerful he appeared ; and he exchanged telegrams with the Historical Society of Maine, the members little thinking how soon they would be meeting to mourn his death.

On Saturday, the 18th of March, four schoolboys from Boston asked permission to visit him. Kind to the last, he showed them the objects of interest in his study and the \iew of the Charles from its windows, and wrote his name in their albums. That afternoon he went out and took a chill ; and in the afternoon of the following Friday, March 24th, 1882, he sank quietly in death, and the bells of Cambridge tolled the sorrow- ful news that the long, blameless life was ended, and the poet whom the nations loved had passed to his rest. Only nine days before had he laid down his pen with these three lines from ' The Bells of San Bias ' :

Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light ; It is daybreak everywhere.

On the Sunday following the anniver- sary of that lovely morning, forty-three years earlier, when he wrote his third Psalm of Life, that never-to-be-forgotten ' Foot- steps of Angels ' the funeral service was held in the old home. Upon the coffin were placed those symbols of victory and the glory of suffering, a palm branch and a spray of passion flower. Then, amid the gently fall- ing snow, the body was borne to Mount Auburn the God's Acre where so many of his loved ones were already resting. In his own words descriptive of the burial of his brother poet Richard Henry Dana :

The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down

White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall ;

The dead around him seemed to wake, and call His name, as worthy of so white a crown.

Longfellow was of medium height, and his face is familiar to us from many delightful, portraits. In later years his silvery hair was carelessly thrown back from his forehead; a full beard and moustache partially con- cealed the pleasant mouth ; but his mild blue eyes expressed the kindliness of his heart and his quick reading of the hearts of others. All who had the privilege of being received in his home tell us of his exquisite simplicity of manners, and his soft, sweet,, musical voice, which, like his face, had the innate charm of tranquillity ; he had what the French aptly call the " politeness of the heart," and had a magnetism which drew all hearts towards him. Mrs. Carlyle remembered his visit to them at Craigen- puttock as " the visit of an angel " ; and William Winter, who had been greeted by him as a young aspirant in literature, would walk miles to Longfellow's house only to put his hand upon the latch of the gate which the poet himself had touched.

Whittier wrote to Aldrich a few days after Longfellow's death :

"It seems as if I could never write again. A feeling of unutterable sorrow and loneliness oppresses me " ;

and in a letter to his niece, Mrs. Pickard> he said :

" He has been an influence for good ; all the Christian virtues his verse and his life exemplified. Pure, kindly, and courteous, simple, yet scholarly, he was never otherwise than a gentleman. There is no blot on the crystal purity of his writings."

While America was full of grief for her son, England mourned for him as for a brother. The British press was as one with the American in its chorus of praise, and The Athenceum pronounced him to be " the most popular of English-speaking poets." In the same number appeared tributes from Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Austin Dobson. I quote the closing lines of the latter : Lie calm, white and laureate head ! Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead,

Since from the voiceless grave Thy voice shall speak to old and young While song yet speaks an English tongue

By Charles' or Thamis' wave ! It is pleasant to record that Mr. Dobson's verses are preserved in a volume on the library table at Craigie House.

Although the remains of the beloved poet rightly rest in the land of his birth, we in England desired to have him associated with our own Valhalla, and my old friend the late Dr. W. C. Bennett, well remembered