The Knickerbocker/Volume 63/Number 6/Washington Irving
WASHINGTON IRVING.
In Memoriam.
'As that new grave was covered, the beauty of a sunset of extraordinary splendor was poured over it as a last farewell; and as the sun went down over the Rockland Hills, and the gold of the clouds faded into gray, and the glory of the rolling river died in the leaden dulness of the night, there were few of the thousands returning homeward from that day's pigrimage whose hearts were not moved within them.'—Paper of the day.
They have laid him at rest, and that sun-gilded hillAt whose base his loved Hudson rolls sparkling and still,Which his fancy has peopled, his footsteps have trod,Is his monument now, and his pillow its sod, And his beautiful grave tells his story;As that river, his life-stream flowed tranquil and kind,As bright as those sunbeams, the rays of his mind, And as gentle, their heart-warming glory.
They have laid him at rest, and his spirit has fled,And all that was mortal of Irving is dead!But the sail that first shadowed San Salvador's wave,And the halo that rests around Washington's grave, In the light of his genius shine o'er him;While the hearts he has lightened, the homes he endeared,Which his brilliancy brightened, his sympathy cheered, As a loved and a lost one, deplore him.
Rear o'er him no column, no vainly-carved stone,That river, those hills, are for ever his own!They are full of his presence, they echo his name,In the scenes he has pictured is mirrored his fame— They bloom in the beams of his glory;While that river shall roll, while those hill-tops shall stand,The ripples that break upon Sunnyside's strandShall scroll his loved name, on his own native land, And his beautiful grave tell his story.Irving's Birthday, April 5.
C. W. L.