“A tribute from such a singer would honor the obsequies of the proudest sovereign, would add freshness to the laurels of the mightiest conqueror. But he who this evening has this tribute laid upon his hearse, wore no crown save that which the sisterhood of the Muses wove for him. His victories were all peaceful ones, and there has been no heartache after any of them. His life was a journey through many lands of men, through many realms of knowledge. He left his humble door in boyhood, poor, untrained, unknown, unheralded, unattended. He found himself, once at least, as I well remember his telling me, hungry and well-nigh penniless in the streets of an European city, feasting his eyes at a baker’s window and tightening his girdle in place of a repast. Once more he left his native land, now in the strength of manhood, known and honored throughout the world of letters, the sovereignty of the nation investing him with its mantle of dignity, the laws of civilization surrounding him with the halo of their inviolable sanctity,—the boy who went forth to view the world afoot, now on equal footing with, the potentates and princes who, by right of birth or by the might of intellect, swayed the destinies of great empires.
“He returns to us no more as we remember him, but his career, his example, the truly American story of a grand, cheerful, active, self-developing, self-sustaining life, remains as an enduring inheritance for all coming generations.”
Mr. Longfellow’s poem, as read by Dr. Holmes, was as follows:—
“Bayard Taylor.
“Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.
As the statues[2] in the gloom,
Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,
So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him, silent as themselves.