This was the first meeting between Miss Larcom and Mr. Brooks. She had heard him preach at Trinity Church and was greatly helped by his sermons, for which she had often thanked him by letter, and, in return, had received some few characteristic lines, like the following:—
Boston, April 14, 1879.
My dear Miss Larcom,—The preaching of Christ as a personal friend and Saviour of all our souls becomes to me more and more the one interesting work of life, and the readiness of the people to hear that one simple message, which, in its endlessly various forms, is always the same, gives me ever new satisfaction and delight.
I have known you by your verses for years. I hope some day we may meet.
Yours very truly,
Phillips Brooks.
The friendship between them deepened, as the years went on. They had many serious conversations on spiritual subjects, and he became to her the great religious guide of her life. His personality, with its earnest, and even fierce, love for the simplicity of truth, and the power with which he presented it, made the deepest impression upon her in her last decade, and brought to the fruition of spiritual loveliness the remaining years of her career.
Boston, March 20, 1880.
My dear Miss Larcom,—You will allow me to thank you for your note and to say how truly glad I am if anything I said on Wednesday evening helped you in your thought of the Lord’s Supper. To me the Personalness of the great Sacrament seems to be the key to all its meaning, and its simplicity is its grandeur and its charm.
Ever yours sincerely,
Phillips Brooks.
TO MRS. S. I. SPALDING.
627 Tremont Street,
February 12, 1880.... You must be disheartened often, in having to listen to the vagaries of the many who have ordained themselves prime ministers of divine affairs. I really cannot feel it right to put myself in the way of hearing such talk.
What can the end be, since there is common sense among the people, but a disgust for preaching altogether?
But I believe in a movement towards a service in which worship shall be the chief element; and I don’t think I am a step nearer Episcopacy, either. I am trying to like that, because I have always been unjustly prejudiced against it, but I am a born Independent at heart....
The years of Miss Larcom’s greatest poetical production were brought to a close by the printing, in 1880, of “The Wild Roses of Cape Ann.” Her works were bound together in a Household Edition, in 1884. After this, she wrote continually for the magazines, and on anniversary occasions of various kinds. Some of these verses were included, with a few new ones, in the booklet “Easter Gleams,” and in the selection of religious poems, called “At the Beautiful Gate,” but no noted additions were made to her poems after this, though there are many of her lines of great beauty, scattered through the pages of current ephemeral literature, up to the time of her death.
TO S. T. PICKARD.
Bethel, Me., September 30, 1880.
My dear Mr. Pickard—I go to-morrow to Berlin Falls, New Hampshire, to stay at the Cascade House until I have finished reading my proof.[7] I wish to thank you for your interest in the book about to be. It will have more character and more local color than the other; but I do not write for critics, but for my friends, as the dedication will show, and I do not care much whether critics like it or not, provided my friends do.
I can conceive of no greater damper upon one’s poetic attempts than the cold water of criticism. It is from heart to heart, from friend to friend, that I write; and I find in that the highest inspiration to do my best. Of course I am glad to enlarge the circle of my friends in this way; and poetry has amply repaid me in the coin of friendship. One gives out life in writing; and nothing but life in return—life enlarged and filled—gives any true satisfaction. Of course I shall send you a copy, not editorially, but personally.
The “Wild Roses” were fragrant, and delighted some of the critics, even, for in addition to those that grew along Cape Ann, there were many cultivated ones, that blossomed beside the still waters of thought, and in the quiet retreats of meditation:—
“A Rose is sweet,
No matter where it grows: and roses grow
Nursed by the pure heavens, and the strengthening earth,