"Most persons have died before they expire—died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great majority of dying persons await this locking of those gates of life through which its airy angels have been coming and going from the moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have been often called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always there is a preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on the smaller scale there is for the removal of a milk tooth. The roots which hold human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its place. Some of the dying are weary, and want rest, the idea of which is almost inseparable, in the universal mind, from death. Some are in pain, and want to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. And some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as they draw near the next world, they would fain hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over the sands when the foremost travellers send word along the file that water is in sight. Though each little party that follows in a foot-track of its own will have it that the water to which others think they are hastening is a mirage, not the less has it been true in all ages, and for human beings of every creed which recognised a future, that those who have fallen, worn out by their march through the Desert, have dreamed at least of a River of Life, and thought they heard its murmurs as they lay dying."
The Professor at the Breakfast Table, O. W. Holmes.
September 11
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
"Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;
"For, tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."
Tennyson.
SEPTEMBER 12
"If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit of my friend until after it was unfolded at the breaking of the morn, when the sleep was over."
Tennyson—a Memoir, by his Son.