What a
white, beautiful soul! Her views of the mission of spiritualism seem
very much like ----'s. I do not know when I have read a more restful,
helpful book.
"How good Longfellow's poem is! A little sad, but full of 'sweetness
and light.' Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, and myself are all getting to
be old fellows, and that swan-song might serve for us all. 'We who are
about to die.' God help us all! I don't care for fame, and have no
solicitude about the verdicts of posterity.
"'When the grass is green above us
And they who know us and who love us
Are sleeping by our side,
Will it avail us aught that men
Tell the world with lip and pen
That we have lived and died?'
"What we _are_ will then be more important than what we have done
or said in prose or rhyme, or what folks that we never saw or heard of
think of us."
The following hitherto unpublished poem was written about this period
upon the marriage of the daughter of his friend Mrs. Leonowens:--
TO A. L.
WITH THE CONGRATULATIONS OF HER MOTHER'S FRIEND
The years are many, the years are old,
My dreams are over, my songs are sung,
But, out of a heart that has not grown cold,
I bid God-speed to the fair and young.
Would that my prayer were even such
As the righteous pray availing much,
But nothing save good can Love befall,
And naught is lacking since Love is all,
Thy one great blessing of life the best,
Like the rod of Moses swallows the rest!
(Signed) JOHN G.
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