both lovers of nature and of man. Both earnest abolitionists, intensely
patriotic, loving liberty and the rights of the humblest of God's
creatures, they were kindred spirits. So Whittier wrote not alone for
New England, not alone for East and West, but from the deeps of his own
loyal and gentle soul, as he penned, these beautiful lines:

"The great work laid upon his two-score years
It's done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
With him whose life stands rounded and approved
In the full growth and stature of a man.
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
Wave cheerily still, O banner, halfway down,
From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
No more forever! - has he lived in vain
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one and told
Your bridal service from his lips of gold."

Whittier refuses to believe that King's life, though he lived but "two
score years" was a "broken plan." All who believe that life is of divine
ordering, our days, our duty, our destiny to the last hour will, with
resignation, accept this teaching of faith. To others it will seem in
the nature of an irreparable loss that one so good, and so greatly
useful, should have died so young.