The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed beyond the pale of possibility.
"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave."
Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.
"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"
sang Landor years ago of his protégée, who outlived her friend and critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time, that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage Landor.
"We upon earth
Have not our places and our distances
Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,
Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,
Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,
And place and magnitude are ascertained."
Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.