[Manchester—Saturday, 22 July 1865]
Saturday. In my dreams last night the music of Dante verses returned to me and I saw a woman bring music out of a strange shell instrument. Commemoration yesterday at Harvard for her young dead heroes!
What an ever memorable day the one at Harvard. The prayer of Phillips Brooks, the ode of Lowell, the address of Dr Putnam & the Governor and the heartfelt verse of Holmes and the lovely music and the hymns. But Lowell’s Ode!! How it overtops the whole of what is preserved on paper beside!
Charles G. Loring presided. Awkwardly enough done said O.W.H. “It is a delicate thing to introduce a poet, he should be delivered to the table as a falconer delivers the falcon into the air but Mr Loring puts you down hard on the table,—cha-chunk”.
Between the hearing of those things from the world outside, the seas roar and swell and murmur and urge us forward by their own persuading.
