Part 11 (2/2)
”Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, And creeping ivy flings its graces About the lichened rocks, and floods Of suns.h.i.+ne fill the shady places.
”Then, when the sky, the air, the gra.s.s, Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender, Then bear me through the Goshen Pa.s.s Amid its flush of May-day splendor.”
So _will_ we bear him! Human heart To the warm earth's drew never nearer, And never stooped she to impart Lessons to one who held them dearer.
Stars lit new pages for him; seas Revealed the depths their waves were screening; The ebbs gave up their masteries, The tidal flows confessed their meaning.
Of ocean paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The lightning-footed thought might travel.
And yet unflattered by the store Of these supremer revelations, Who bowed more reverently before The lowliest of earth's fair creations?
What sage of all the ages past, Ambered in Plutarch's limpid story, Upon the age he served, has cast A radiance touched with worthier glory?
His n.o.ble living for the ends G.o.d set him (duty underlying Each thought, word, action) naught transcends In l.u.s.tre, save his n.o.bler dying.
Do homage, sky, and air, and gra.s.s, All things he cherished, sweet and tender, As through our gorgeous mountain pa.s.s We bear him in the May-day splendor!
The summer of 1884 Margaret Preston spent abroad in the places of which she had read with a loving enthusiasm which made them her own.
”Don't show me; let me find it,” she would say, and go straight to the object of her quest. Her reading had brought her into companions.h.i.+p with all the beautiful minds of the world, and all the places that had been dear to them were sacred to her heart. Windermere was ”redolent all over with the memories of Wordsworth, Southey, Kit North, Hartley Coleridge, Harriet Martineau, Dr. Arnold.” ”Ambleside--Wordsworth's Ambleside--Southey's; and such hills, such greenery, I never expect to see again. Then we took carriage to Grasmere Lake, a lovely little gem.”
”I walked to Wordsworth's grave without being directed, and on reading his name on his stone, and Mary Wordsworth's on his wife's, I am free to confess to a rush of tears, Dora Quillinan, his daughter's, and dear old Dorothy, whom Coleridge, you know, p.r.o.nounced the grandest woman he had ever known. Suddenly turning I read the name of poor Hartley Coleridge and again I felt my eyes flow.”
Perhaps few travellers have seen as much in a summer's wandering as did Margaret Preston, yet it was on her ”blind slate” that she was forced to write of these things and of the ”crowning delight of the summer,” the tour through Switzerland. She said, ”My picture gallery of memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness cannot blot or cause to fade.”
Life in Preston House with all its enchantments came to an end for Margaret Preston with the pa.s.sing of the n.o.ble and loving man who had made her the priestess of that home shrine. The first two years after his death she spent with her stepdaughter, Mrs. Allan, who lived near the old home. Then she went to the home of Dr. George J. Preston, of Baltimore, where she was the centre of the home and took great delight in his children with their pretty ”curly red heads.” She never walked again except to take a few steps with a crutch.
From 819 North Charles Street she wrote: ”Here my large airy room faces brick walls and housetops and when I sit at the library windows I only see throngs of pa.s.sers-by, all of whom are strangers to me.”
Her life was beautiful and content, but she must often have longed for the old friends and the ”laureled avenues” and the ”edges of the glorious Goshen Pa.s.s lit with the wavering flames of the July rhododendrons.”
March 29, 1897, Margaret Preston died as she had wished when she expressed her desire in her poem ”Euthanasia,” written in memory of a friend who had pa.s.sed away unconscious of illness or death:
With faces the dearest in sight, With a kiss on the lips I love best, To whisper a tender ”Good-night”
And pa.s.s to my pillow of rest.
To kneel, all my service complete, All duties accomplished--and then To finish my orisons sweet With a trustful and joyous ”Amen.”
And softly, when slumber was deep, Unwarned by a shadow before, On a halcyon billow of sleep To float to the Thitherward sh.o.r.e.
Without a farewell or a tear, A sob or a flutter of breath, Unharmed by the phantom of Fear, To glide through the darkness of death!
Just so would I choose to depart, Just so let the summons be given; A quiver--a pause of the heart-- A vision of angels--then Heaven!
”THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'”
AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON
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