"_Feel a little better. Resumed work_"; and he wrote the music to those foreboding words: "_Grief follows joy as night the day._" He took hardly five days to finish this chorus, which is really sublime. He stopped then for four months.[269] On June 18 he resumed the third act. He was again interrupted in the middle.[270] The last four airs and the final chorus took more time than a whole oratorio usually occupied. He did not finish it until August 30, 1751. His sight was then gone. * * * * * After that, all was ended. Handel's eyes were closed for ever.[271] The sun was blotted out, "_Total eclipse_...." The world was effaced. He had never suffered so much as in the first year of his illness, when he was not yet completely blind. In 1752 he was unable to play the organ at the productions of his oratorios, and the public, moved by sympathy, saw him tremble and blanch in listening to the admirable complaint of his blind Samson. But in 1753, when the evil was incurable, Handel regained his self-possession. He played the organ again at the twelve performances of oratorios which he gave each year in Lent, and he kept up this custom until his death. But with his vanished sight he had lost the best source of his inspiration. This man, who was neither an intellectual nor a mystic, one who loved above all things light and nature, beautiful pictures, and the spectacular view of things, who lived more through his eyes than most of the German musicians, was engulfed in deepest night. From 1752 to 1759 he was overtaken by the semi-consciousness which precedes death. He only wrote in 1758 a duet and chorus for _Judas Maccabæus_, "Zion now her head shall raise," and reviving in that the happy times of other days he took up a work of his youth, the _Trionfo del Tempo_,[272] which he now gave in a new version in March, 1757: _The Triumph of Time and Truth_.[273] [Illustration: HANDEL'S MONUMENT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. (_In the "Poets' Corner."_)] On April 6, 1759, he again took the organ at a production of _The Messiah_. His powers failed him in the middle of a movement. He soon recovered himself and improvised (it is said) with his habitual grandeur. Returned home he took to bed. On April 11 he added a last codicil to his will,[274] bequeathing munificently £1000 sterling to the Society for the Maintenance of Poor Musicians, and expressing, with tranquillity, his desire of being buried in Westminster Abbey. He said: "I want to die on Good Friday in the hope of rejoining the good God, my sweet Lord and Saviour, on the day of his Resurrection." His wish was accomplished. On Holy Saturday, April 14, at eight in the morning, the sweet singer of _The Messiah_ slept with his Lord. * * * * *