But we need not stop here. After he had become a Spiritualist, that is, on the 5th of April, 1862, the evening before his seventy-seventh birthday, he wrote a poem of one hundred and sixty lines, entitled "Meditations of a Birthday Eve," a copy of which he sent me on the 10th of November following, upon the express condition that nobody but myself was to see it, until it should be all over with him. It must have been written without labor, as one would breathe a prayer upon a death-bed. The following extracts—I wish we had room for more—will show what were his feelings and what his aspirations at this time.
"Spirit, my spirit, hath each stage
That brought thee up from youth
To thy now venerable age
Seen thee in search of Truth?
"Hast thou in search of Truth been true,—
True to thyself and her,—
And been with many or with few
Her honest worshipper?
* * * * *
"Spirit, thy race is nearly run;
Say, hast thou run it well?
Thy work on earth is almost done;
How done, no man can tell.
"Spirit, toil on! thy house, that stands
Seventy years old and seven,
Will fall; but one 'not made with hands'
Awaiteth thee in heaven.
"Washington, D.C., 5 April, 1862."
With the foregoing came another poem, "In Commemoration of a Silver Wedding," October 2, 1863, full of tenderness and pleasantry,—the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. J. Pierpont Lord.
And on his eighty-first birthday, called by a strange mistake his eightieth, there was another celebration, yet more solemn and affecting, where the greetings and congratulations of his brother-poets, all over the land, were sent to him and published in the newspapers of the day.
Among his later poems, the "E Pluribus Unum" appears to me most worthy of his reputation, and least like the doings of his early manhood.