Then, while on Moosilauke summit, the news of Mr. Whittier’s death came to me--more translation than death. I seemed to see him pass on by me, up the heights, and seemed to hear him say, as he passed, “So easy a thing it is to die! Like the mountain blending with the clouds, like the melting of earth into sky, is the transition from life into loftier life.” He too passed away in peace; the lovelier to think of, because he had always dreaded the hour of death. He, too, was my noble and tried friend; in my life for more than fifty years. He is associated in my life with the beauty of the hills and the sea that we have enjoyed together, with the deep things of poetry and religion, which were indeed one reality to him. The memory of fireside talks in his own home, with his sister, so dear to us both; the readings of “In Memoriam” with him after she was gone,--are most blessedly vivid to me.
And Tennyson has died, within a week! One could know him only through his poetry, but what a halo that has hung over our mortal life in all its phases! To know the man and the poet, as I knew Whittier, and to be able to feel the greatness of both, is an immortal possession.
Emerson, Browning, Bryant, Whittier, Tennyson,--and where are the singers who take us into the heart of things as they did? There is a delicate murmur of trained voices making music in this modern air, but it does not arrest us and hold us, as the voices of the now silent masters did. It is hardly an age of song.
... I have dreamed of him [Mr. Whittier] lately, sitting by the fireside chatting in the old way, as when I used to visit him and Aunt Lizzie. She was more to me than almost any friend, more even than he. I always thought of them as one; and now they are together again. They cannot be far away. I want to keep near them in spirit, so as to find them at once, by and by. I am glad I did not ever know that he was rich. He used to want to pay my bills when we were at West Ossipee, etc., but I declined, for I supposed he was almost as poor as myself, though I know of late years his books have paid well. I am very glad he left me the copyright of the books I compiled with him; and indeed it was only right, as I worked so hard on them. The “Songs of Three Centuries” nearly cost me my health; the publishers “rushed” it so. I was good for nothing for three or four years after, as far as writing went. But he never knew.