Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/293

Rh part of nearly twenty years, that still remained to him, was spent in his native city, between those intellectual pursuits and rural occupations, which relieve and dignify each other. An edition of such of his works, both in prose and poetry, as he thought proper to select, was given to the public during the last year of his life, and ranks among the best specimens of American literature. It was then little thought that this gift to his country would prove a valedictory. Yet while his intercourse with the external world was but slightly changed, there were those nearest his heart who anxiously marked the "fading brow, the sinking eye." After a brief illness, which gave, until the point of fatal termination, no distinct announcement of danger, he passed away, just at the opening of the year 1841.

The intelligence of an event which afflicted so many friends, awoke the following effusion from one absent in a foreign clime:

A troubled sound upon thy heaving breast Thou bear'st, old ocean, from my native strand A sound of wo! And art thou gone to rest, Thou of the noble soul, and tuneful band?

I saw thee last within thy pleasant dome, Thy fair, ancestral oaks, in glory spreading, While every blest affection round thy home, And through thy heart a genial warmth was shedding.