"I shall never, never marry. It cannot, must not be. As to affections, mine are already engaged as much as they ever will be, and this is one reason why I believe my life will be a life of celibacy. I love too ardently to make love innocent, and therefore I say farewell to it."
With this passage one of his Sonnets singularly agrees:
When I sit musing on the chequer'd past (A term much darken'd with untimely woes), My thoughts revert to her, for whom still flows The tear, though half disowned; and binding fast Pride's stubborn cheat to my too yielding heart, I say to her, she robb'd me of my rest, When that was all my wealth. 'T is true my breast Received from her this wearying, lingering smart; Yet, ah! I cannot bid her form depart; Though wrong'd, I love her--yet in anger love, For she was most unworthy. Then I prove Vindictive joy: and on my stern front gleams, Throned in dark clouds, inflexible.... The native pride of my much injured heart.
Was the subject of this Sonnet wholly imaginary, or was there some unfortunate story which, for sufficient reasons, his biographers have suppressed? It is true, that in his letters, written at a much later period, he speaks of marriage in a manner not to be reconciled with the idea that he was then suffering from recollections of that description; but he may, in the interval of two years, have partially recovered from his loss.
Kirke White was buried in the Church of All Saints, Cambridge, but no monument was erected to him until a liberal minded American, Mr. Francis Boott, of Boston, placed a tablet to his memory, with a medallion, by Chantrey, with the following inscription, by Professor Smyth, one of his numerous friends:
"Warm'd with fond hope and learning's sacred flame, To Granta's bowers the youthful Poet came; Unconquer'd powers the immortal mind display'd, But worn with anxious thought, the frame decay'd: Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired, The martyr student faded and expired. Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere, Too early lost 'midst studies too severe! Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen, He told the tale, and show'd what White had been, Nor told in vain. For o'er the Atlantic wave A wanderer came, and sought the Poet's grave; On yon low stone he saw his lonely name, And raised this fond memorial to his fame."