The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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.

He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under the shadow of oaks; the very spot he would have chosen, for he looked upon trees with something akin to human affection. ‘They are,’ he said, ‘the beautiful handiwork and architecture of God, on which the eye never tires. Every one is “a feather in the earth's cap,” a plume in her bonnet, a tress on her forehead, –a comfort, a refreshing, and an ornament to her.’ Spring has hung over him her buds, and opened beside him her violets. Summer has laid her green oaken garland on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of autumn drop upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on that mound? He loved humanity,—shall it be less kind to him than Nature? Shall the bigotry of sect, and creed, and profession, drive its condemnatory