or,
"Black as ash-buds on the front of March."
Whatever it might be she was observing, there was some line of this great interpreter of nature ready to make the moment melodious. Shakespeare's sonnets were also her close companions; indeed, she seized and retained a cloud of beautiful things in her trustworthy memory. They fed and cheered her on her singing way.
In the quiet loveliness of early summer, and before the tide of humanity swept down upon Appledore, she went for the last time, in June, 1894, with a small company of intimate friends, to revisit the different islands and the well-known haunts most dear to her. The days were still and sweet, and she lingered lovingly over the old places, telling the local incidents which occurred to her, and touching the whole with a fresh light. Perhaps she knew that it was a farewell; but if it had been revealed to her, she could not have been more tender and loving in her spirit to the life around her.
How suddenly it seemed at last that her days with us were ended! She had been listening to music, had been reading to her little company, had been delighting in one of Appleton Brown's new pictures, and then she laid her down to sleep for the last time, and flitted away from her mortality.
The burial was at her island, on a quiet afternoon in the late summer. Her parlor, in which the body lay, was again made radiant, after her own custom, with the flowers from her garden, and a bed of sweet bay was prepared by her friends Appleton Brown and Childe Hassam, on which her form was laid.
William Mason once more played the music from Schumann which she chiefly loved, and an old friend, James De Normandie, paid a brief tribute of affection, spoken for all those who surrounded her. She was borne by her brothers and those nearest to her up to the silent spot where her body was left.
The day was still and soft, and the veiled sun was declining as the solemn procession, bearing flowers, followed to the sacred place. At a respectful distance above stood a wide ring of interested observers, but only those who knew her and loved her best drew near. After all was done, and the body was at rest upon the fragrant bed prepared for it, the young flower-bearers brought their burdens to cover her. The bright, tear-stained faces of those who held up their arms full of flowers to be heaped upon the spot until it became a mound of blossoms, allied the scene, in beauty and simplicity, to the solemn rites of antiquity.
It was indeed a poet's burial, but it was far more than that: it was the celebration of the passing of a large and beneficent soul.