She never thought of herself as old, therefore she never was really old in the essentials. Her iron will, her indomitable spirit, held her frail body to its duty till the very end.
“Life is like a cup of tea, the sugar is all at the bottom!” she cried one day. This was the very truth; she knew no “winter of discontent.” Her autumn was all Indian summer, glorious with crimson leaves, purple and gold sunsets.
In April, 1910, she wrote the third and last of her poems to her beloved friend and “Minister” James Freeman Clarke. She read this poem twice, at the centenary celebration of Mr. Clarke’s birth held at the Church of the Disciples, April 3rd, and the day after at the Arlington St. Church. Compared with the verses written for Mr. Clarke’s fiftieth birthday and with those celebrating his seventieth birthday, this latest poem is to me the best. The opening lines bite right into the heart of the matter; as she read them standing in the pulpit a thrill passed through the congregation of her fellow disciples gathered together in memory of their founder.
Richer gift can no man give
Than he doth from God receive.
We in greatness would have pleasure,
But we must accept our measure.
Let us question, then, the grave,
Querying what the Master gave,
Whom, in his immortal state,
Grateful love would celebrate.
Only human life was his,
With its thin-worn mysteries.
. . . . . . .
Lifting from the Past its veil,
What of his does now avail?
Just a mirror in his breast
That revealed a heavenly guest,
And the love that made us free
Of the same high company.
The poem on Abraham Lincoln written for the Lincoln Centenary and read by her at the meeting in Symphony Hall, Boston, February 12th, 1909, is perhaps the best of the innumerable memorial poems she composed. As one by one the centenaries of this and that member of the band of great men and women who made our country illustrious in the 19th Century were celebrated, it came to be considered as a matter of course that she, almost the last survivor of that noble company, should write a poem for the occasion. So difficult a critic as Professor Barrett Wendell said to me that he considered some of the stanzas of the Lincoln poem as good as the Battle Hymn. I remember he particularly liked the last two verses,
A treacherous shot, a sob of rest,
A martyr’s palm upon his breast,
A welcome from the glorious seat
Where blameless souls of heroes meet;
And, thrilling through unmeasured days,
A song of gratitude and praise;
A cry that all the earth shall heed,
To God, who gave him for our need.
During her last summer she was in correspondence with her friend Mr. Garrison about the publication of a volume that should gather up into one sheaf these scattered occasional poems. She had this much on her mind and made every endeavor to collect the poems together: some of them had never been printed, and of others she possessed no copy. She stopped in Boston on her way to Smith College in the last days of last September, and spent an afternoon in her Beacon St. house looking for some of those lost poems. Her wish was fulfilled, and the posthumous volume, to which we gave the title “At Sunset,” lies beside me. Look down the page of contents and note how various are the names that figure in the list of personal poems, and what a wide range of character they show; beginning with Lincoln, Doctor Holmes, Washington Allston, Robert E. Lee, Whittier, Lucy Stone, Phillips Brooks, Robert Browning, Archbishop Williams, and ending with Michael Anagnos—this is a wide swath to cut, wide as her own sympathy.
One poem of hers that has soothed many a wounded heart should be better known than I believe it to be. Though it has no dedication, it might well be dedicated to the men and women who have tried, and who to the world seem to have tried in vain.
ENDEAVOR