urnished, although some of his best poems were
written after the change.

But the last twenty years of Mr. Longfellow's life were saddened
inexpressibly by the loss of his wife, and all his later work is of a
sombre hue, filled through and through, unconsciously, with his own
sadness. Unconsciously we say, for he never intentionally rhymed his own
sorrows. There is no personal mention of his griefs in all his later
poems. The death of his wife occurred on the 9th of July in 1861, and
was caused by burns received from having her clothing ignited by a match
upon which she trod in their library, where she had been sealing up some
packages of the children's curls, which she had just cut. Mr. Longfellow
was badly burned in trying to save her, and when the funeral took place
was confined to his bed. She was buried upon the anniversary of her
marriage-day, and was crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms. She was
long remembered in Cambridge as the most beautiful woman of her
time,--beautiful not alone in body, but in spirit and life. Mr.
Longfellow never recovered from the tragedy, but mourned her in silence
for twenty years. Heart-breaking are the entries in the journal during
all this time,--entries telling at frequent intervals of his ever
increasing desolation. Little was known of all this by the world until
the publication of his journal, for it was one of the peculiarities of
his grief that he could speak of it to no one. Only after months had
passed did he allude to it in his letters even to his brothers, and then
in the briefest fashion: "And now of what we both are thinking I can
write no word. God's will be done." The first entry in the journal after
the break made at the time of her death is this:--

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul!
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll."

The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are frequent and like
these: "Walk before breakfast with E---- and afterward alone. The
country is beautiful, but oh, how sad! How can I live any longer!" "The
glimmer of golden leaves in the sunshine; the lilac hedge shot with the
crimson creeper; the river writing its silver S in the meadow;
everything without full of loveliness. But within me the hunger, the
famine of the heart!" "Another walk under the pines, in the bright
morning sunshine."

"Known and unknown; human, divine:
Sweet human hand