As the clouds of his last days were gathering around him I can fancy I hear him murmuring:
I twine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land s language; if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline—
If my fame should be as my fortunes are
Of hasty growth and blight; and dull oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honored by the nations—let it be—
And light the laurels on a loftier head,
And be the Spartan s epitaph on me,
"Sparta hath many a worthier son than he."
The doors of our Metropolitan "Hall of Fame" are not yet wide enough to admit his sculptured image and there is no panel on its walls for the inscription of his name but he needs no such recognition of the supremacy of his genius, nor will "dull oblivion" bar him from the temple of literary glory where the whole world worships.
The stream of time which washes away the dissoluble fabrics of other poets flows on without harm to the adamant of Shakespeare, and so we believe that as the centuries come and go the name of Edgar Allan Poe will be uttered with steadily increasing admiration and praise by millions yet unborn as peer of the loftiest of
The bards sublime
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of time.
