Come up — come up; in the dim vale below
The autumn mist muffles the fading trees,
But on this keen hill-pasture, though the breeze
Has stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow,
Night is not, autumn is not-but the flow
Of vast, ethereal and irradiate seas,
Poured from the far world's flaming boundaries
In waxing tides of unimagined glow.And to that height illumined of the mind
He calls us still by the familiar way,
Leaving the sodden tracks of life behind,
Befogged in failure, chilled with love's decay--
Showing us, as the night-mists upward wind,
How on the heights is day and still more day.
But I must draw to a close, and shall do this by reprinting the very latest words addressed by this old friend to me; these being written very near his last days. Having been away from Cambridge all summer, I did not know that he had been at Cambridge or ill, and on my writing to him received this cheerful and serene answer, wholly illustrative of the man, although the very fact that it was dictated was sadly ominous:--
