be. I can neither write nor think; and I have nothing fit to send you
but my love, which you cannot put into the magazine."

For ever after the death of his wife he was a different man. His
friends suffered for him and with him, but he walked alone through the
valley of the shadow of death. "The blow fell entirely without
warning, and the burial took place upon the anniversary of her
marriage day. Some hand placed on her beautiful head, lovely and
unmarred in death, a wreath of orange blossoms."

There was a break in his journal at this time. After many days he
inscribed in it the following lines from Tennyson's poem addressed to
James Spedding:--

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace.
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul!
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll."

His friends were glad when he turned to his work again, and still more
glad when he showed a desire for their interest in what he was doing.

It was not long before he began to busy himself continuously with his
translation of the "Divina Commedia," and in my diary of 1863, two
years later, I find:--

"_August._--A delightful day with Longfellow at Nahant. He read
aloud the last part of his new volume of poems, in which each one of a
party of friends tells a story. Ole Bull, Parsons, Monti, and several
other characters are introduced."