Death of Cary: I want to go away

Alice Cary was 51 when she died on February 12, 1871, never able to finish her final poem. Her last words were recorded as, "I want to go away." She was buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery; her pallbearers included showman P. T. Barnum and newspaperman Horace Greeley. Her sister and fellow poet Phoebe Cary died a few months later.

Alice knew her death from tuberculosis was coming soon and many of her later writings (and recorded conversations) refer to her readiness to die and her religious conviction. In a collection of her works published shortly after her death,  her last completed poem, excluding the incomplete one written a few days before her death, was included with the title "Her Last Poem":

Earth with its dark and dreadful ills,
    Recedes and fades away;
Lift up your heads, ye heavenly hills;
    Ye gates of death, give way!

My soul is full of whispered song,—
    My blindness is my sight;
The shadows that I feared so long
    Are full of life and light.

My pulses faint and fainter beat,
    My faith takes wider bounds;
I feel grow firm beneath my feet
    The green, immortal grounds.

The faith to me a courage gives.
    Low as the grave to go, —
I know that my Redeemer lives, —
    That I shall live I know.

The palace walls I almost see
    Where dwells my Lord and King.
O grave, where is thy victory?
    O death, where is thy sting?

The rainbow comes but with the cloud

As she was on her death bed, Alice Cary allegedly wished she could live only ten more years. "I wouldn't ask for more time [than that]. I would live such a different life," she said, according to her sister Phoebe Cary, "I would never shut myself up in myself again." Her friends became her greatest delight. Shut out from the world in the final stage of tuberculosis, she took solace in hearing what others were doing, particularly their plans for the future. She began to see God in her friends, and anticipated meeting them again in the afterlife.

At the same time, Alice stayed committed to her role as a poet. One local publication expected a contribution from her every month and, diligently, on the first of every month she wrote a new poem. On the first of February that year, however, she was unable to write, nor even dictate a new poem. Finally, after a few days, she asked to be helped into a chair. It was February 7, 1871, and it was to be Alice Cary's last poem. Her hand trembled and she dropped her pen in the attempt. She only finished one stanza:

As the poor panting hart to the water-brook runs,
   As the water-brook runs to the sea,
So earth's fainting daughters and famishing sons,
   O Fountain of Love, run to Thee!

She attempted another poem which ended, "The rainbow comes but with the cloud." But Alice died peacefully in her sleep five days later. She was 51 years old. Her younger sister Phoebe joined her in death only a few months later.

Death of Phoebe Cary: Nearer Home

The Ohio-born Phoebe Cary died in Newport, Rhode Island on July 31, 1871, having outlived her sister Alice Cary by about five months. Her last few moments were allegedly restless, until she finally threw up her arms and called out, "O God, have mercy on my soul!" They were recorded as her last words.

It was said that she could not live without her sister, who had died of tuberculosis, but Phoebe also suffered from hepatitis. Alice had been laid to rest in New York's Green-Wood Cemetery in the frozen ground covered with snow; Phoebe's burial took place on a scorching, summer day. At her funeral, the choir read Phoebe's hymn "Nearer Home":

One sweetly solemn thought
    Comes to me o'er and o'er;
I am nearer home to-day
    Than I ever have been before;

Nearer my Father's house,
    Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
    Nearer the crystal sea;

Nearer the bound of life,
    Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the cross,
    Nearer gaining the crown!

But lying darkly between,
    Winding down through the night,
Is the silent, unknown stream,
    That leads at last to the light.

Closer and closer my steps
    Come to the dread abysm:
Closer Death to my lips
    Presses the awful chrism.

Oh, if my mortal feet
    Have almost gained the brink;
If it be I am nearer home
    Even to-day than I think;

Father, perfect my trust;
    Let my spirit feel in death,
That her feet are firmly set
    On the rock of a living faith!

Birth of Phoebe Cary

Originally named Mount Pleasant, this small village in southwestern Ohio was renamed Mount Healthy in 1850, following an outbreak of cholera. It was in this town that poet Phoebe Cary was born on September 4, 1824; her older sister and fellow poet Alice Cary was born there four years earlier. Their family home is now a center for the blind and visually impaired.

The two sisters wrote poetry and were first collected in an anthology by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1848; Griswold also helped them publish their own book, The Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, in 1849. Its success inspired their move to New York. In that city, Phoebe published two books of her own poetry. Of the two sisters, Phoebe was the more outspoken one; she was involved with the women's rights movement and, for a time, she edited The Revolution, a newspaper published by Susan B. Anthony.

Phoebe's most famous poem is a hymn, "Nearer Home" — a somber piece which was often sung at funerals. However, she also had a humorous side and wrote many parodies (including one of Edgar Allan Poe and many of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). One example is "Ballad of the Canal," a parody of James T. Fields's "Ballad of the Tempest":

We were crowded in the cabin,
Not a soul had room to sleep;
It was midnight on the waters,
And the banks were very steep.

'Tis a fearful thing when sleeping
To be startled by the shock,
And to hear the rattling trumpet
Thunder, "Coming to a lock!"

So we shuddered there in silence,
For the stoutest berth was shook,
While the wooden gates were opened
And the mate talked with the cook.

And as thus we lay in darkness,
Each one wishing we were there,
"We are through!" the captain shouted,
And he sat upon a chair.

And his little daughter whispered,
Thinking that he ought to know,
"Isn't travelling by canal-boats
Just as safe as it is slow?"

Then he kissed the little maiden,
And with better cheer we spoke,
And we trotted into Pittsburg,
When the morn looked through the smoke.

*The image above is from "Old Pictures," an online resource collecting historic images.

The Prince of Glory for sinners bled

The "Radical Republican" Thaddeus Stevens died on August 11, 1868. A major member of the House of Representatives (on behalf of Pennsylvania, though he was born in Vermont) during the Civil War years, Stevens endorsed the end of slavery and set the course for Reconstruction in the South, knowing that the South needed to be guided through those years. He met with resistance from President Andrew Johnson and called for his impeachment (he was the first President to be impeached but was acquitted).

The Ohio-born poet Phoebe Cary paid poetic tribute to Stevens shortly after his death. Cary (along with her sister Alice) was a published poet with the help of Rufus Griswold. Later, she was an advocate for women's rights and an occasional salon hostess in New York City. Her poem elevates Stevens as a major heroic figure.

An eye with the piercing eagle's fire.
Not the look of the gentle dove;
Not his the form that men admire.
Nor the face that tender women love.

Working first for his daily bread
With the humblest toilers of the earth;
Never walking with free, proud tread —
Crippled and halting from his birth,

Wearing outside a thorny suit
Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power;
Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit,
Or inmost heart of fragrant flower.

Fierce and trenchant, the haughty foe
Felt his words like a sword of flame;
Rut to the humble, poor, and low
Soft as a woman's his accents came.

Not his the closest, tenderest friend —
No children blessed his lonely way;
But down in his heart until the end
The tender dream of his boyhood lay.

His mother's faith he held not fast;
But he loved her living, mourned her dead.
And he kept her memory to the last
As green as the sod above her bed.

He held as sacred in his home
Whatever things she wrought or planned,
And never suffered change to come
To the work of her "industrious hand."

For her who pillowed first his head
He heaped with a wealth of flowers the grave.
While he chose to sleep in an unmarked bed,
By his Master's humblest poor — the slave!

Suppose he swerved from the straightest course —
That the things he should not do he did —
That he hid from the eyes of mortals, close.
Such sins as you and I have hid?

Or suppose him worse than you; what then?
Judge not, lest you be judged for sin!
One said who knew the hearts of men:
Who loveth much shall a pardon win.

The Prince of Glory for sinners bled;
His soul was bought with a royal price;
And his beautified feet on flowers may tread
To-day with his Lord in Paradise.

*The images of Thaddeus Stevens and Phoebe Cary both come from Old-Picture.com, an amazing educational resource which compiles hundreds of 19th-century photos.