or his pen. "The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop of
dew." "Humility is power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by
the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting;
that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he
was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote
a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image,
to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble
words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or
the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and her siren
daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the
hallowed fire of his altars to touch and purify the lips of whom He
pleases."

Under that inspiration and revelation the poet is a divine interpreter
of (in his own words)--

"All lovely things, and gentle--the sweet laugh
Of children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp,
The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff,
The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp--
All that exalts the grounds of happiness,
All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless,

"To me are sacred; at my holy shrine
Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints;
I turn life's tasteless waters into wine,
And flush them through and through with purple tints.
Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down,
I rear my altars, and I wear my crown."

It was this mission of Poetry that filled his mind and heart and life
with abiding light, which made him cling passionately to life, not
because of any physical fear of death, but because in that mission Art
and Nature were so inexpressibly rich and sweet to him to reveal his
message to man. In the benediction of his dying words, "Love is sweeter
than rest!"

The moral purity of these poems is their distinctive quality, as it
was of the man. With a universal sympathy for all life, still he moved
always on the highest planes of thought and feeling and purpose. He
seemed always to be impressed in his art with the truth of his own
lines,--

"There is no unimpressive spot on earth,
The beauty of the stars is over all."

His earnestness and deep poetic insight clothed all themes with the
beauty and light that is in and over all.

Timrod's melancholy, the finest test of high poetic qua