and other poems in this collection, testify to the mourner's sacred sorrow. Thus:
Oh for a glance into the world above!
Enfranchised trembler, thou art surely there!
Not mine the gloom fanatic to despair
Of grace for thee: but, reft of thy pure love,
So dread a conflict in my soul I prove,
So lost I feel in solitary care,
So frail, forlorn, and worthless, that I dare
Aspire to no such height, unless the dove
Of peace, descending, teach my hope to soar.
Fond heart! thy wounds were heal'd, thy sins forgiven;
I saw thee die; I know that thou art blest.
Thou, dying sufferer, wert wing'd for heaven;
And when thy spirit mounted to its rest
My guardian angel fled, to come no more.
"Two graves in Grasmere Vale, yew-shaded both, his all of life, if life be love, comprised;" and to a space remaining for himself between them, the sorrower's thoughts were now habitually directed. He continued to live with his daughters in the same cottage, Longhrigg Holme. "He walked about more than ever with Mr. Wordsworth. They had now a new sympathy, but a sad one. It pointed to a grave in Grasmere churchyard." Yet a little while, and the elder poet[1] was carried to the same peaceful God's-acre. Nor was the end of the other far off. Mr. Quillinan died in the following year (1851)—talking of literature, his ruling passion, in the delirium of approaching dissolution; and even after he had ceased to recognise his children, one hour before he died, endeavouring, pen and ink in hand, to pursue his translation of the "History of Portugal," that it might "be of use" to the daughters who stood by his bedside, though he knew them not. On the 12th of July, 1851, the green sods of Grasmere churchyard covered another shrouded denizen, there to sleep beside the darling of his heart, beneath the shadow of the yew-trees near at hand, and the everlasting hills not afar off. Restless hath been the greed, within the last few years, of that Churchyard among the Mountains.
Mr. Quillinan was by education and profession a Roman Catholic,
- ↑ In a letter to Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, Mr. Quillinan thus announces the decease of William Wordsworth: "We had known for two or three days at least that there was no hope; but we were led to believe that the end was not yet. At twelve o'clock this day [April 28—said to be Shakspeare's birthday and death-day too], however, he passed away, very, very quietly. Mrs. Wordsworth is quite resigned. There is always some sweetening of the bitterest cup; it was expected that he would linger perhaps for some weeks, and that his sufferings would be extreme; but the mercy of God has shortened the agony, and we fondly hope that he did not suffer much pain—that be had not reached that stage of suffering which the medical men apprehended. Last night I was with him for about half an hour up to ten o'clock; he lay quite still and never spoke, except to call for water, which he often did. 'Drink, drink,' was all be said. William (bis younger son) sat up with him till past live o'clock, and was then relieved by John (his eider son), who had only returned from Brigham (his parish) at nine last evening. He remained to the last in the same quiet state, never moving; yet as this had been the case so long, and he had always been most unwilling to move, or to have his position altered, it was by no means supposed that the last hour was so near. He is gone! You know well the distress at Rydal Mount."
