At last, arrived at where our paths divide,
‘Good night!’ and, ere the distance grew too wide,
‘Good night!’ again; and now with cheated ear
I half hear his who mine shall never hear.See Memorial poem, entitled Agassiz, by James Russell Lowell.
This text is part of:
‘
[547]
would have heard in answer the names of Hawthorne, Motley, Dana, Lowell, Whipple, Peirce, the distinguished mathematician, Judge Hoar, eminent at the bar and in the cabinet, Dwight, the leading musical critic of Boston for a whole generation, Sumner, the academic champion of freedom, Andrew, “the great War Governor” of Massachusetts, Dr. Howe, the philanthropist, William Hunt, the painter, with others not unworthy of such company.’
We may complete the list and add the name of Holmes himself, to whose presence the club owed so much of its wit and wisdom.
In such company the guests were tempted to linger long, and if Holmes has described the circle around the table, Lowell has celebrated the late walk at night across the bridge as he and Agassiz returned to Cambridge on foot together.
To break the verse by quotation would mar the quiet scene and interrupt the rambling pleasant talk it so graphically describes.
But we may keep the parting words:
Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.