He died in 1894, at the age of eighty-five, and was
buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery not far from Longfellow and Lowell.
POETRY.--In 1836 he published his first volume of verse. This contained his
first widely known poem, _Old Ironsides_, a successful plea for saving the
old battleship, _Constitution_, which had been ordered destroyed. With the
exception of this poem and _The Last Leaf_, the volume is remarkable for
little except the rollicking fun which we find in such favorites as _The
Ballad of the Oysterman_ and _My Aunt_. This type of humor is shown in this
simile from _The Ballad_:--
"Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like seaweed on a clam," and in
his description of his aunt:--
"Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span."
He continued to write verses until his death. Among the last poems which he
wrote were memorials on the death of Lowell (1891) and Whittier (1892). As
we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a
high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be
remembered, is The _Chambered Nautilus_. No member of the New England group
voiced higher ideals than we find in the noble closing stanza of this
poem:--
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
Probably _The Last Leaf_, which was such a favorite with Lincoln, would
rank second.
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