On the evening of Thursday, the 12th of December (1889), he was in bed, with exceeding weakness. In the centre of the lofty ceiling of the room in which he lay, and where it had been his wont to work, there is a painting by his son. It depicts an eagle struggling with a serpent, and is illustrative of a superb passage in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam". What memories, what deep thoughts, it must have suggested; how significant, to us, the circumstance! But weak as the poet was, he yet did not see the shadow which had begun to chill the hearts of the watchers. Shortly before the great bell of San Marco struck ten, he turned and asked if any news had come concerning "Asolando", published that day. His son read him a telegram from the publishers, telling how great the demand was and how favourable were the advance-articles in the leading papers. The dying poet smiled and muttered, "How gratifying!" When the last toll of St. Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before, those by the bedside saw a yet profounder silence on the face of him whom they loved.
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It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for the irreparable loss. The magnificent closing lines of Shelley's "Alastor" must have occurred to many a mourner; for gone, indeed, was "a surpassing Spirit". The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem worth recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight, than those craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn funeral-barge through the thronged waterways and out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with the sweet aerial music swaying upward the loved familiar words of the `Lyric Voice' hushed so long before. Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble friends, Lambeth artisans and a few poor working-women, who threw sprays of laurel before the hearse — by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, shivering in his threadbare clothes, who seemed transfixed with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted inward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again like the sea upon this lost wandering wave.
Who would not honour this mighty dead? All who could be present were there, somewhere in the ancient Abbey. One of the greatest, loved and admired by the dead poet, had already put the mourning of many into the lofty dignity of his verse: —
"Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak,
And voiceless hands the world beside his bier,
Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear:
We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.
We see a spirit on Earth's loftiest peak
Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:
See a great Tree of Life that never sere
Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak:
Such ending is not Death: such living shows
What wide illumination brightness sheds
From one big heart — to conquer man's old foes:
The coward, and the tyrant, and the force
Of all those weedy monsters raising heads
When Song is murk from springs of turbid source."*
— * George Meredith. —
One word more of "light and fleeting shadow". In the greatness of his nature he must be ranked with Milton, Defoe, and Scott. His very shortcomings, such as they were, were never baneful growths, but mere weeds, with a certain pleasant though pungent savour moreover, growing upon a rich, an exuberant soil. Pluck one of the least lovely — rather call it the unworthy arrow shot at the body of a dead comrade, so innocent of ill intent: yet it too has a beauty of its own, for the shaft was aflame from the fulness of a heart whose love had withstood the chill passage of the years.
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On the night of Browning's death a new star suddenly appeared in Orion.* The coincidence is suggestive if we like to indulge in the fancy that in that constellation —
"No more subjected to the change or chance
Of the unsteady planets ——"