This stranger had, in her peculiar situation, tenderly won upon the sympathies of a few kind-hearted individuals who had made their way to her, one of whom, a Mrs. Southwick, lived directly opposite the Bell Tavern. These were with her in her last great agony, in which all sense of guilt was lost in pity. Mrs. S. has related that no word of complaint or accusation was heard to fall from her lips, while the spirit seemed brightening with an unearthly hope, till what was charming in life was indescribably lovely in death. Thus they laid the beautiful stranger in the saintly robes of the sepulchre without censure and without accusation, not knowing how painfully she was mourned and missed, as a star shut out of vision by clouds and storm, in the home of her childhood and in the heart of a widowed mother.
She had passed under the assumed name of Walker while at the Bell Tavern of Danvers, and her wardrobe was found marked with the corresponding initials, "E.W.," although applying to her real name as well. These facts, in connection with her death, were immediately published in the Boston and Salem journals, and her friends advertised to appear; and thus were her real name and place of residence elicited.
A short time afterwards, and a stranger came and caused to be erected in the old burying ground in Danvers, on the spot where she was interred, two "gray stones," after the manner of Ossian, with the touching inscription which this volume records; and the feet of strangers, moved by pity and humanity, have worn a path to her grave which he who covets most in the world's memory might even envy.
The tombstones (which the fathers of that ancient town should shame to have recorded) have been battered and broken for relics, till much of the inscription is gone already, and the footstone entirely removed.
But I have noted that Elizabeth Whitman was of superior merit, and had been recognized as a child of genius in its most earnest sense. From her earliest childhood she had been remarkable for a deeply poetic temperament, and it appears she was recognized as a poet of no common order by the most distinguished writers of the day—Barlow, Trumbull, and others. Why her name and writings have not been handed down to us by those who have essayed to make careful compilations of the literature of the past century, I am unable to divine. She was a relative as well of the last-named poet, Trumbull, on the side of his mother, who was Sarah Whitman, a sister of Rev. Elnathan Whitman, the father of Elizabeth.
I find in the journals of that time the following poem, which, though not the best of her productions, certainly gives evidence of much poetic power:—
TO MR. BARLOW.
By his Friend ELIZABETH WHITMAN, on New Year's Day, 1783.
Should every wish the heart of friendship knows
Be to your ear conveyed in rustic prose,
Lost in the wonders of your Eastern clime,
Or rapt in vision to some unborn time,
Th' unartful tale might no attention gain;
For Friendship knows not, like the Muse, to feign.
Forgive her, then, if in this weak essay
She tries to emulate thy daring lay,
And give to truth and warm affection's glow
The charms that from the tuneful sisters flow.
On this blest morning's most auspicious rise,
Which finds thee circled with domestic joys,
May thy glad heart its grateful tribute pay
To Him who shaped thy course and smoothed thy way—
That guardian Power, who, to thy merit kind,
Bestowed the bliss most suited to thy mind—
Retirement, friendship, leisure, learned ease,
All that the philosophic mind can please;
All that the Muses love, th' harmonious nine,
Inspire thy lays, and aid the great design.
But more than all the world could else bestow,
All pleasures that from fame or fortune flow,
To fix secure in bliss thy future life,
Heaven crowned thy blessings with a lovely wife—
Wise, gentle, good, with every grace combined
That charms the sense or captivates the mind;
Skilled every soft emotion to improve,
The joy of friendship, and the wish of love;
To soothe the heart which pale Misfortune's train
Invades with grief or agonizing pain;
To point through devious paths the narrow road
That leads the soul to virtue or to God.