Fulfil their missions and as calmly die
As waves on quiet shores when winds are low.
Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill
That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,
Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical
That float and change at the light breeze's will,--
To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury,
Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall.

Here with "the bonny brown hand" in his that was "dearer than all dear
things of earth" Paul Hayne found a life that was filled with beauty,
notwithstanding its moments of discouragement and pain. We like to
remember that always with him, helping him bear the burdens of life,
was that wifely hand of which the poet could say, "The hand which
points the path to heaven, yet makes a heaven of earth."

On sunny days he paced to and fro under the pines, the many windows of
his mind opened to the studies in light and shade and his soul attuned
to the music of the drifting winds and the whispering trees. When
Nature was in darkened mood and gave him no invitation to the open
court wherein she reigned, he walked up and down his library floor,
engrossed with some beautiful thought which, in harmonious garb of
words, would go forth and bless the world with its music.

The study, of which he wrote:

This is my world! within these narrow walls
I own a princely service

was perhaps as remarkable a room as any in which student ever spent