The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth With Sixteen Illustrations. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton |
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THORWALDSEN'S DEATH. |
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 | The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth |  |
THORWALDSEN'S DEATH.
Is on the place where the great sculptor sat:
'Tis but a moment since he sat and smiled,
And then he sank—you could not say he fell
Out of his chair, he sank so quietly.
A whisper in the theatre of death,
Death and Thorwaldsen—is Thorwaldsen dead?
Yes! whilst you filled the place with loud applause
He left you unobserved. The curtain falls,
For a great soul has left the stage of life.
The theatre is emptied, silent, dark,—
Empty, and dark, and silent is the brain
Once thronged with images of loveliness!
The King and Queen received the sculptor's bier.
And as it slowly came along the aisle,
With royal princes and the great of Denmark
All weeping round it, the colossal Christ
Which he had chiselled, looked serenely down,
To his repose. On both sides stood the Twelve;
And they bare living witness of the dead,
Whose hand had carved them for his monument.
This short poem was suggested by a conversation with a Danish Lady who had been personally acquainted with the great sculptor, and was in possession of a large and beautiful collection of his drawings. The particulars of the funeral are recorded in a volume of “The Illustrated London News,” but are too long for extraction;—not so the following vivid passage from Andersen's “Story of my Life.”
“On the last day of his life I sat beside him at dinner; he was uncommonly merry, repeated some witticisms, which he had just read in the ‘Corsair,’ a well-known Copenhagen paper, and spoke of the journey which he intended to undertake to Italy in the summer. We parted after this: he went to the theatre, I home. On the following morning the waiter at the hotel where I put up said, ‘That was a strange thing about Thorwaldsen—that he died yesterday.’ ‘Thorwaldsen!’ exclaimed I: ‘he is not dead; I dined with him yesterday.’ ‘They say that he died yesterday evening at the theatre,’ said the waiter. I thought he had been taken ill, but still felt a strange anxiety, and hastened immediately over to his house. There lay his corpse, stretched out on the bed; the room was crowded with strangers; the floor wet with snow-water; the air stifling. The Baroness Stampe sat on the bed and wept bitterly. I stood trembling, and deeply affected.”
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