“Ah! that hamlet in Saxon Kent,
Shall I find it when I come home?
With toil and travelling well-nigh spent,
Tired with life in jungle and tent,
Eastward never again to roam.
Pleasantest corner the world can show
In a vale which slopes to the English sea—
Where strawberries wild in the woodland grow,
And the cherry-tree branches are bending low,
No such fruit in the South countree.”
Sir Alfred died on the 10th of April, 1911, at Lord Tennyson’s house at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Michael’s, Harbledown. Now brother and sister are both sleeping under the grassy sod of the Kentish land which they loved so well, “where the nightingales sing{181} heart-piercing notes in the silence of the early summer night.”
“Shelter for me and for you, my friend,
There let us settle when both are old,
And whenever I come to my journey’s end,
There you shall see me laid, and blend
Just one tear with the falling mould.”
