The latter's "Ballads" particularly delighted him. One,
written "in the old English manner", he quickly learned by heart,
repeating it with a relish and fervor indescribable.

Here is the opening stanza: --

"Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot;
Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O!
The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O! sweetest lass,
and sweetest lass
Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!"

With but a slight effort of memory I can vividly recall his voice and manner
in repeating these simple yet beautiful lines.

They were the last verses I ever heard from the poet's lips.

Just as the woods were assuming their first delicate autumnal tints,
Timrod took his leave of us. In a conversation on the night but one previous
to his departure, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other literary persons
of unusual age, when he observed: "I haven't the slightest desire, P----,
to be an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr;
but I hope that I may be spared until I am FIFTY or fifty-five."

"About Shakespeare's age," I suggested.

"Oh!" he replied, smiling, "I was not thinking of THAT;
but I'm sure that after fifty-five I would begin to wither, mind and body,
and one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical.
Do you remember that picture of extreme old age which Charles Reade gives us