Daniel Dulany Addison

“ The best preparation for death is to be alive as fully as one is capable of being; for the transition is not from life to death, but from life to life; more life always. And the time when we are to be called hence need not trouble us, or the way: it is in the heart of the Father to do the best thing for us forever.
May 4. I have been to Esther’s grave, and found Spring there, a glimpse of the immortal sunshine and blossoming in which she lives. I have found love growing for me in her home, in one young, glad heart; and in one life-worn and sorrow-worn. ”

“ The people I am with show me how beautiful it is to live truth, justice, and sympathy. They belong to no Church, but their lives are most beautifully harmonized with the spirit of Him who was, and is, the expression of God’s love to man. When with them I almost feel as if it were better not to profess religion in churches,—this living testimony is so far beyond what most Christians can show; but then I remember that it is because God in Christ is in the world, because the divinity has revealed itself in humanity, that they are what they are. ”

“ This first week of October, this month of months, shall not pass without some record of its beauty. Norton woods and Norton sunsets are the two redeeming features of the place; as its levelness is its bane. What is it in us that refuses to love levels? Is it that there is no searching and toiling for anything, up cool heights and down in sheltered hollows?
These splendidly tinted maples before my window would be a hundred-fold more splendid if lifted up among the hemlocks and pines of the mountainsides. Oh! how magnificent those New Hampshire hills must be now, in the sunset of the year! ”

“ We have entangled ourselves with wrong, have gone contrary to the Divine Order; now, if we come out plainly and strongly on the right side, we triumph; for Right cannot fail. This war will make a nation of great and true souls; if we fight for freedom. And what else is worth the conflict, the loss of life? The Union, a Country—a home? Yes, if these may be preserved in honor and humanity, not otherwise. Better be parceled out among the nations than keep the stigma of inhumanity upon our great domain. Freedom for slavery is no freedom to a noble soul. ”

“ Every day brings something to stir the deep places of the soul, and in the general awakening of life and liberty it may be that every heart feels its own peculiar sorrow and happiness more keenly. There is a deeper life in every breath I draw; and messages from distant friends seem more near and touching. One day, from one of the most beloved and honored, comes a kind word for my poor efforts at poetry; almost a prophecy of some blessed days of summer life among the mountains by and by,—and a holy benediction, “God bless thee, and keep thee!” ”

“ TO J. G. WHITTIER.
Beverly, February 24, 1892.
... The thought of a present God, who is a personal Friend to every Soul, has always haunted me, and of late years has become more real and close. It seems to me that all truth and peace and hope centre there. It gives new meaning to immortality, and to this life as the beginning of an immortal one. Every year it seems a happier thing to be alive, and to know that I cannot die.
Through thee, my friend, I have come to see this very slowly. I have always thought of thee as a spiritual teacher. ”

“ That I have not lost all this, I felt to-day, in receiving a note from an unknown person,—from one who had read some poems of mine in childhood, and now, a woman, bears something not unworthy the name of poet; to hear some new voice speaking to me in this way, as a friend, is pleasant to me. I have written as I have felt, in my verses; they have been true words from my deepest life, often; and I am glad whenever they call forth a sincere answer, as now;—one word of real appreciation repays me for pages of mere fault-finding. Yet a kind fault-finder is the best of friends. ”

“ How can Thy being be questioned by one who has had a single glimpse of the beauty of this Thy world? It is such happiness to feel that I am part of it all, because I belong to Thee! Yet I should never have known the spirit of it all, never should have understood the secret, except through the Son, who has brought Thy children back to their spiritual home in Thee. In Him the evil of earth is conquered, and the good of earth is shown also to be the good of heaven. To be of one spirit with Him, the Perfect Love and the Infinite Loveliness, is to belong to the Whole, and so to Thee. ”

“ Passion Week has been a revelation to me of the divine history made real. It has seemed to me as if I really followed and faltered with the disciples, in Gethsemane, at the mock trial of Pilate, and through the terrible scenes of the Crucifixion. It is so much to the world, that the Church has kept up the Christian year, with these awful and glorious anniversaries. How often their reality has faded out, when men are left to themselves. ”

“ Whenever I enter deeply into the thought of Christ, whenever I feel Him the one Reality inseparable from my own being, then I feel that I have my friends safe, and that they are to be my friends forever. To me, He is the one Divine Friend in whom human friendships can alone be real and permanent, because He draws us into sympathy with what is best, with what is eternal, the love of goodness, the consciousness of God in us and around us, and the solemn gladness of a human life into which God has entered, and where He still is. ”

“ But I must not go on about the mountains, or I shall never stop,—I want to say something about our poets, but I will not do that, either.
Beauty drifts to us from the mother-land, across the sea, in argosies of poetry. How rich we are with Old England’s wealth! Our own lies yet somewhat in the ore, but I think we have the genuine metal.
How true it is, as you say, that we can never utter the best that is in us, poets or not. And the great true voices are so, not so much because they can speak for themselves, but because they are the voices of our common humanity. ”

“ It is from heart to heart, from friend to friend, that I write; and I find in that the highest inspiration to do my best. Of course I am glad to enlarge the circle of my friends in this way; and poetry has amply repaid me in the coin of friendship. One gives out life in writing; and nothing but life in return—life enlarged and filled—gives any true satisfaction. ”

“ This is the gala week of spring. None of the early flowers have quite faded, and the apple-trees are in full bloom, while elms and maples are just wearing their lightest drapery of green, so tardily put on. Soft breezes, sweet melody from many birds, clear sunshine, not yet too warm,—all things are just in that state, when, if we could wish for a standstill in nature, we should.
And Esther has been one week in heaven! It seems to me, sometimes, as if some new charm was added to cloud and sunshine, and spring blossoms, since she went away ”

“ I would be kept safe from everything but a plain opening to the life of self-sacrifice in the footsteps of our one true Guide! I will trust Him for all, and be at rest from the dread of too much sunshine, as well as from fear of storms. He knows what I need.
There is heart-heaviness for souls astray, such as I have seldom felt, weighing me down even now. There is one poor girl, half ruined, and not knowing how to escape destruction, for whom there seems no outlet but into the very jaws of death. None but a Divine Power can help her; yet He may do it by making human helpers appear for her. ”

“ She found poetry in everything around her; it was the atmosphere she breathed, the medium, like imponderable ether, through which she saw life. Nature had a more profound meaning to her than the charm of color, or the changing pleasures of the land or the sea. It was the visible evidence of the unseen, the prophecy of a greater fulfillment, the proclamation of the spiritual element within, which the senses of themselves could not perceive. ”

“ Therefore letters are to me a more genial utterance than a journal, and I would write any journal as if for some one who could understand me fully, love me, and have patience with me through all. I do not know if now there is any such friend for me; yet dear friends I have, and more and more precious to me, every year. If these were my last words, I would set them down as a testimony to the preciousness of human friendships; dearer and richer than anything else on earth. By them is the revelation of the divine in the human ”

“ Brooks this morning at the church seemed to carry out the spirit of last night’s service. We climb up the great mountain-tops, he said, but we cannot live there, though we may keep their inspiration within us. But the high table-lands which we have gained by long gradual ascent,—we can live and breathe there; and can grow hopeful in the broad outlook before us. Such are the consecrations of life to which we have grown step by step, out of which greater developments are to open for us, and above which the loftier summits are always overhanging. ”

“ Norton, September 2, 1860.
... I enjoyed being with my friends. I told you that they were Universalists, but theirs is a better-toned piety than that of some Orthodox friends. Still, there was a want in it, a something that left me longing; it was as if they were looking at the sunlit side of a mountain, and never thought of the shadows which must be beyond. The mystery of life is in its shadows, and its beauty, in great part, too. There isn’t shadow enough in Universalism to make a comprehensible belief for me. ”

“ The deeper depths of the soul are sacred to one Eye alone, and so much as a shrinking soul may reveal to a friend, it will. I would discourage too free a conversation about one’s own feelings; it is dissipating, except where a burdened soul must pour out itself to another for sympathy. Why cannot we leave our friends to find God in the silence of the soul, since there is His abode? ”

“ Our men do not know what they are fighting for; freedom is greater than the Union, and a Union, old or new, with slavery, no true patriot will now ask for. May we be saved from that, whatever calamities we may endure!
The ride to and from Boston has a new picture since summer: the camp at Readville, just under the shadow of the Milton hills. It is a striking picture, the long array of white tents, the soldiers marching and countermarching, and the hills, tinted with sunset and autumn at once, looking down upon the camping ground. ”

“ Weary, weary, too weary to listen patiently to the heavy Sabbath bells; far too weary to sit in the church and listen to loud words and loud singing. And my brain is too tired to let my heart feel the beauty of this quiet day. I only know that the balm and beauty of June are around me, without realizing it much. But rest will come soon, up among the mountains with friends who love noise and confusion as little as I do. ”

“ Holmes very well describes her when he says: “She was as true a product of our Essex County soil as the bayberry; and her nature had the chaste and sweet fragrance of its fair and wholesome leaves. She was a true poetess, and a noble woman.” Her writings have the genuine flavor of the soil, like the perfume of the woods, or the salt spray that bathes one’s face along the seashore. Mr. Whittier thus analyzed her powers as a poet: “She holds in rare combination the healthfulness of simple truth and common sense, with the fine and delicate fancy, and an artist’s perception of all beauty.” ”

“ So the happy pilgrim rested, knowing that as soon as there was light anywhere, he should have the first ray. Strange, that every Christian sojourner should not seek a room with windows opening to the dawn! Some of them seem afraid of the sun; they choose a chamber having only a black, northerly outlook, and lie down saying, “What a dreary, miserable world!” And what wonder that they should grow thin and sickly—plants of the shade must ever be so; the soul, as well as the body, needs large draughts of sunshine for vigorous life. ”

“ Sometimes it seems to me that God’s way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death. I know that I feel more completely in sympathy with those who went away from me into heaven long ago than I did when they were here. Still I love and long for my friends, and would gladly see them while they are here, in the dear familiar way. ”