Edward Everett Hale.
Mrs. Moulton's visit to London in the summer of 1906 was her last. While her health forced her to decline most invitations, she still saw her numerous friends in quiet, intimate ways, and was made to feel their abiding affection.
On her birthday of this year she received, with a single red rose, this poem from the late Arthur Upson:
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Does a rose at the bud-time falter To think of the Junes gone by? Shall our love of the red rose alter Because it so soon must die? Nay, for the beauty lingers Though the symbols pass away— The rose that fades in my fingers, The June that will not stay. I used to mourn their fleetness, But years have taught me this: A memory wakes their sweetness, The hope of them, their bliss. They are not themselves the treasure, But they signal and they suggest Imperishable pleasure, Inviolable rest! |
Among the Christmas gifts which she made this year was a copy of "At the Wind's Will," which she sent to Miss Sarah Holland Adams, the accomplished essayist and translator from the German. It was thus acknowledged:
Miss Adams to Mrs. Moulton
"Dear Mrs. Moulton: Your beautiful little book is a dear thing. I thank you for sympathy in the loss of my only brother. I am writing to the publisher for your 'Garden of Dreams.' I've never read it and now I need to live in dreams. Do you know Swinburne's lines on the death of Barry Cornwall? No poem ever haunted me like this. The tone of it, even in my brightest moods, seemed to color my words. Of course this must be imagination, but the last lines are so dear,—
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"For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, Tho' the dead to our dead bid welcome—and we, farewell." |
"Later.