University of Virginia Library

CONCLUSION.

All things are beautiful in their time. Even Death, whom
the poets have for ages made hideous, painting him as a skeleton
reaper, cutting down tender flowers and ripe grain, and
binding them into bundles for his dark garner, heedless of tears
and prayers, is sometimes clothed with the wings and the
mercy of an angel. It was one of the most beautiful conceptions
of Blake, displayed in those illustrations of the Night
Thoughts which forever should cause his name to be associated
with the poet's, that his countenance who is called the Last
Enemy was all sweetness and pitying gentleness; and how
many, who have trembled with terror at his approach, have
found the dearest rest in his embraces, as a frightened child has
forgotten fear in wildest joy on discovering that some frightful
being was only its mother, masqued for playing. Through this
still messenger “He giveth his beloved sleep.” How pleasant
to the old and the worn to resign all their burdens in his hands,
to lay by the staff, and lie down under canopies of flowers,
assured that even through the night of the grave the morning
will break! Thrice pleasant to the old, assured of having
fought the good fight, and who feel, beneath the touch of Death,
their white locks brightening with immortal crowns. They
have done their work, and only Death can lead them up to
hear from the master, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
To the little child who has never sinned, he comes like a
light slumber, and the tempter, through the long bright ages,
has no power. Only through the narrow and dark path of the
grave could the tender feet have escaped the thorns—only to
the bed which is low and cold may the delirium of passion and
the torture of pain never come; so to the child the foe is the
kindest of friends—dearest of friends!

One of the loveliest pictures that ever rises before me—I see
it as I write—is that of a fair creature whose life was early
rounded by that sleep which had in it the “rapture of repose”
nothing could disturb forever. She had lain for days moaning
and complaining, and we who loved her most could not help
her, though she bent on us her mournfully beseeching eyes
never so tenderly or imploringly. But when the writhing of
anguish was gone, death gave to her cheek its beauty, and to
her lips the old smile, and she was at rest. She had been
lovely in her life and now she was transformed into an angel
of the beautiful light, the fair soft light of the good and changeless
world.

And for the wicked, looking over ruins they have made of
life's beauty, friends they have changed to foes, love they have
warped to hatred, one agonized moment of repentance has
stretched itself up to the infinite mercy, and through radiance
streaming from the cross, has sounded the soul-awakening and
inspiring sentence, “Thy sins are forgiven!” What divine
beauty covers the darkness that is before and around him! how
blest to go with the friend who has come for him down into
the grave, away from reproachful eyes—away from haughty
and reviling words—away from the gentle rebuking of the
injured, hardest of all to bear, and from the murmuring and
complaining of a troubled conscience!

Whatever is dreariest in nature or saddest in life may in
its time be bright and joyous—winter itself, with its naked
boughs and bitter winds, and masses of clouds and snow.
Poverty, too, with whom none of us voluntarily mate ourselves,
has given birth to the sweetest humanities; its toils and privations
have linked hand with hand, joined shoulder to shoulder,
knit heart to heart; the armies of the poor are those who
fight with the most indomitable courage, and like dust before
the tempest are driven the obstacles that oppose their march;
is it not the strength of their sinews that shapes the rough iron
into axe and sickle? and does not the wheat-field stand smiling
behind them and the hearth-light reach out from the cabin
to greet their coming at night? Poverty is the pioneer about
whose glowing forges and crashing forests burns and rings half

the poetry that has filled the world. Many are the pleasant
garlands that would be thrown aside if affluence were universal,
and many the gentle oxen going from their plowing that
would herd in wild droves but for men's necessities. The
burdens of the poor are heavy indeed, and their tasks hard,
but it has always seemed to me that in their modest homes
and solitary by-paths is a pathos and tenderness in love, a
bravery in adversity, a humility in prosperity, very rarely
found in those conditions where character is less severely
tried, and the virtues, if they make a fairer show, grow less
strong than in the tempest, and the summer heat, and the winter
cold.

It has been objected by some critics to the former series of
these sketches of Western rural life, that they are of too
sombre a tone; that a melancholy haze, an unnatural twilight,
hangs too continually over every scene; but I think it is not
so; if my recollections of “Clovernook” fail to suggest as
much happiness as falls to the common lot, my observation
has been unfortunate. I have not attempted any descriptions
of the gay world; others—nearly all indeed of those writers
of my sex who have essayed to amuse or instruct society—
have apparently been familiar only with wealth and splendor,
and such joys or sorrows as come gracefully to mingle with
the refinements of luxury and art; but my days have been
passed with the humbler classes, whose manners and experiences
I have endeavored to exhibit in their customary lights
and shadows, and in limiting myself to that domain to which I
was born, it has never been in my thoughts to paint it as less
lovely or more exposed to tearful influences than it is. If
among those whose attention may be arrested by these unambitious
delineations of scenes in “our neighborhood,” there be
any who have climbed through each gradation of fortune or
consideration up to the stateliest distinctions, let them judge
whether the “simple annals of the poor” are apt to be more
bright, and the sum of enjoyment is greater in even those elevations,
to attain to which is so often the most fondly cherished
hope of youth and maturity.

In our country, though all men are not “created equal,”

such is the influence of the sentiment of liberty and political
equality, that
may with as much probability be supposed to affect conduct
and expectation in the log cabin as in the marble mansion; and
to illustrate this truth, to dispel that erroneous belief of the
necessary baseness of the “common people” which the great
masters in literature have in all ages labored to create, is a
purpose and an object in our nationality to which the finest and
highest genius may wisely be devoted; but which may be
effected in a degree by writings as unpretending as these reminiscences
of what occurred in and about the little village
where I from childhood watched the pulsations of surrounding
hearts.