To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go.”
Though Longfellow was a thoughtful, he certainly was not a melancholy boy, and the minor key to which so much of his verse is attuned, and that tinge of sadness which his countenance wore in later years, were due to that first great sorrow which came upon him in the loss of her to whom I have referred, and which was chiselled still deeper by subsequent trials. He never buried her, and that beautiful tribute to her memory in the “Footsteps of Angels” is as true as tender.
He was ever ready to extend a helping hand to others. After leaving school we took different paths and never met again till 1870, when I received a communication from him through Mr. James T. Fields, saying that he had kept run of me and wished me to call upon him at a time fixed by him. I went and was most cordially received. I asked him how he had kept run of me. He replied through his brother Alexander, his sister Mrs. Pierce, and Mr. James Greenleaf, his brother-in-law, an intimate friend and later schoolmate of mine. We reviewed the past, and almost the first question he asked in relation to it was about the scholars in that Academy, and he mentioned almost every name but the one I knew was most dear to him. This is what led me to say that he never buried her.
But what a change in that care-worn face, marked with the deep lines of thought and sorrow, from the smooth-cheeked boy of my early recollections, unconscious of care and to whom the future was rainbow tinted and full of hope. The eyes, however, had not lost their wonted expression, and the same sweet smile was on his lips, and he encouraged me in the kindest manner to continue in the course I had just then commenced, in words that it does not become me to repeat, but which will never be forgotten. And from that time to his death I found that neither success nor sorrow had narrowed the sympathies or chilled the heart of Henry Longfellow.