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STORIES OF
same performance for the whole week." After alluding to his restoration to health from a recent illness, he added: "It has left me a wreck, but not a dead man. Pugnaciously would I contest that statement with the newspaper reporters. [A reference to many premature obituary notices.] I have been writing day and night for a Miss Harper, who is preparing a book on the ' Song-writers of the Century,' in which I appear conspicuously. When pub-lished will remit a copy endorsed with our autographs. Through all my sickness I have always adhered to my practice of daily writing or perfecting a specific article: music, prose, or poetry. The amount of my accumulated MSS. is enormous. When the Old Bard really dies he will write his own obituary. So rest con-tent. I am alive and kicking. Life exists in the old dog yet." The Old Bard's last poetic contribution to the poets' corner of the " Mary-land Journal" was called " Lament of the Last Bard," and was in the nature of a valedictory address. A specimen of his muse in his eighty-ninth year is the following—the last verse of this poem:
'* His harp, silent hanging, shrined by the willows, His lyrical strains in affection addressed, By night winds are wafted over the billows, As sorrowing tears bedew the moon's crest, 168 |
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