"He sails once more the sea of years
So wide and vast and deep!
He lives anew old hopes and fears—
Sweet tales of love again he hears,
While flow afresh the scalding tears,
For one long since asleep.
"He sees the wrecks upon the shore,
And everything is drear;
The rolling waves around him roar,
The angry clouds their torrents pour,
His friends are gone forevermore,
And he alone is here.
"Yet through the gloom of gathering night,
A glory from afar
Streams ever on his fading sight,
With Orient beams that grow more bright,
The dawn of heaven's supernal light
From Bethlehem's radiant star."
During the evenings of 1892, Carleton guided a Reading Club of young ladies who met at his house. I remember, one evening, with what effect he read Lowell's "Biglow Papers," his eyes twinkling with the fun which none enjoyed more than he. On another evening, after reading from Longfellow's "The Poet's Tale," "Lady Wentworth," and other poems, Carleton, before retiring, wrote a "Sequel to Lady Wentworth." It is full of drollery, suggesting also what might possibly have ensued if "the judge" had married "Maud Müller." Carleton's poem tells of the risks and dangers to marital happiness which the old magistrate runs who weds a gay young girl.
Carleton was ever a lover and student of poetry, and among poets, Whittier was from the first his favorite. As a boy he committed to memory many of the Quaker poet's trumpet-like calls to duty. As a man he always turned for inspiration to this sweet singer of freedom. What attracted Carleton was not only the intense moral earnestness of the Friend, his beautiful images and grand simplicity, but the seer's perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, its mountains, its watercourses, the ways and customs of the people, the local legends and poetical associations, the sympathy with the Indian, and the seraphic delight which he took in the play of light upon the New Hampshire hills. Not more did Daniel Webster study with eager eyes the glowing and the paling of the light on the hilltops, no more rapturously did Rembrandt unweave the mazes of darkness, conjure the shadows, and win by study the mysteries of light and shade, than did Whittier. To Carleton, a true son of New Hampshire, who had himself so often in boyhood watched and discriminated the mystery-play of light in its variant forms at dawn, midday, and sunset, by moon and star and zodiac, at the equinoxes and solstices, the imagery of his favorite poet was a perennial delight.
As he ripened in years, Carleton loved poetry more and more. He delighted in Lowell, and enjoyed the mysticism of Emerson. He had read Tennyson earlier in life without much pleasure, but in ripened years, and with refined tastes, his soul of music responded to the English bard's marvellous numbers. He became unspeakably happy over the tender melody of Tennyson's smaller pieces, and the grand harmony of "In Memoriam," which he thought the greatest poem ever written, and the high-water mark of intellect in the nineteenth century. Carleton was not only a lover of music, but a composer. When some especially tender sentiment in a hymn impressed him, or the re-reading of an old sacred song kindled his imagination by its thought, or moved his sensibilities by its smooth rhythm, then Carleton was not likely to rest until he had made a tune of his own with which to express his feelings. Of the scores which he composed and sang at home, or had sung in the churches, a number were printed, and have had happy use.
To the end of his life, he seemed to present, in his carriage and person, some of that New Hampshire ruggedness, and even rustic simplicity, that attracted and lured, while it foiled and disgusted those hunters of human prey who, in every large city, wait to take in the wayfaring man, whether he be fool or wise. Because he wore comfortable shoes, and cared next to nothing about conformity to the last new freak of fashion, the bunco man was very apt to make a fool of himself, and find that he, and not the stranger, was the victim. In Boston, which of late years has been so far captured by the Irishman that even St. Patrick's is celebrated under the guise of "Evacuation Day," matters were not very different from those in New York. Carleton, while often conducting parties of young friends around Copp's Hill, and the more interesting historical, but now uncanny houses of the North End, was often remarked. Occasionally he was recognized by the policeman, who would inform suspicious or inquiring fellow foreigners or adopted sons of the Commonwealth, that "the old fellow was only a countryman in town, and wouldn't do any harm."
Lest some might get a false idea, I need only state that Mr. Coffin was a man of dignified dress, and scrupulously neat. He was a gentleman whose engaging presence might suggest the older and more altruistic, rather than the newer and perhaps brusquer style of manners. His was a "mild and magnificent" blue eye in which so many, who loved him so, liked to dwell, and he had no need to wear glasses. The only sign of ornament about him was his gold watch-chain and cross-bar in his black vest buttonhole.[Back to Content]