We who survive him will not forget his peaceful yielding of himself to "the sure-enwinding arms," nor the abounding trust breathed in his last message, sent back from the mystic frontier of the shadowy realm: "Tell them it makes no difference whether I live or die."
Readings
In our chat he discloses a surprising knowledge of men and things, and a more surprising lack of knowledge of his own poetry. More than once it strangely appears that the visitor is more familiar with the lines under discussion than is their author. When this is commented upon he laughingly says, "Oh, yes, my friends often tell me there is a book called 'Leaves of Grass' which I ought to read." So when we, about to take leave, ask him to recite one of his shorter poems, he assures us he does not remember one of them, but will read anything we wish. We ask for the wonderful elegy, "Out of the Cradle endlessly Rocking," and afterward for the night hymn, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," and his compliance confers a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. He reads slowly and without effort, his voice often tremulous with emotion, the lines gaining new grandeur and pathos as they come from his lips.
And this—alas that it must be!—is our final recollection of one of the world's immortals: a hoar and reverend bard,—"old, poor, and paralyzed," yet clinging to the optimistic creeds of his youth,—throned in his great chair among his books, with the waning light falling like a benediction upon his uplifted head, his face and eyes suffused with the exquisite tenderness of his theme, and all the air about him vibrating with the tones of his immortal chant to Death,—the "dark mother always gliding near with soft feet."
Another hand-clasp, a prayerful "God keep you," and we have left him alone in the gathering twilight.
His Future Fame
We will not here discuss his literary merits. The encomiums of Emerson, Thoreau, Burroughs, Sanborn, Stedman, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti, Buchanan, Sarrazin, etc., show what he is to men of their intellectual stature; but will he ever reach the great, struggling mass for whose uplifting he wrought? His own brave faith is contagious, and we may discern in the wide-spread sorrow over his death, in the changed attitude of critics and reviewers, as well as in the largely increased demand for his books, evidences of his general acceptance.
His day is coming,—is come. He died with its dawn shining full upon him.