Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: Part 1 from Volume VI of The Works of John Greenleaf WhittierWhittier, John Greenleaf
History
Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: Part 1 from Volume VI of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Biography
"I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. I have a wife and seven
children, every one of them with a whole spirit. I don't want to be
separated from any of them, only with a view to come together again. I
have a beautiful little retreat in prospect, forty odd miles north, where
I imagine I can get potatoes and repose,--a sort of haven or port. I am
among the breakers, and 'mad for land.' If I get this home,--it is a mile
or two in among the hills from the pretty domicil once visited by
yourself and glorious Thompson,--I am this moment indulging the fancy
that I may see you at it before we die. Why can't I have you come and
see me? You see, dear W., I don't want to send you anything short of a
full epistle. Let me end as I begun, with the proffer of my hand in
grasp of yours extended. My heart I do not proffer,--it was yours
before,--it shall be yours while I am N. P. ROGERS."
Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had dreamed of was close at
hand. He lingered until the middle of the tenth month, suffering much,
yet calm and sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired his
children to sing at his bedside that touching song of Lover's, _The
Angel's Whisper_. Turning his eyes towards the open window, through
which the leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible, he
listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont,--
"The angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear;
From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear,
That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there--
The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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