This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
TRIBUTE OF A FRIEND.
291

was crushing an object, around which were clustering the fond affections of many hearts. It was quenching the light, which shed its rays over a wide circle. In his beautiful residence, the same little group has gathered, as of old, but he who formed its life and soul is gone. They behold from the windows the same bright landscape, stretching out in its beauty, yet the eyes which once dwelt with so much pleasure on the view, and which could behold so readily 'a glory in the grass, and a splendor in the flower,' are closed forever. The 'old ancestral oaks' wave their branches, and their leaves rustle to the breeze, but that ear, to which the sound once came as music, listens to them no longer. He is sleeping with his fathers in the still and quiet churchyard, yet resting there, we trust, 'in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection.' His virtues are enbalmed in the hearts of his friends, for to them he can now only be united by the chain of memory running back to what he once was, and the aspirings of faith, stretching forward to what he now is. But his works belong to the literature of his country, and will ever secure to him a lofty station among the poets of America."