He kept, in the midst of a fretful, slothful, wailing world, where prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and despondent, as the decadents they despised, the temper of his Herakles in _Balaustion_.

He left us that temper as his last legacy, and he could not have left us a better thing.

We may hear it in his last poem, and bind it about our hearts in sorrow and joy, in battle and peace, in the hour of death and the days of judgment.
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned-- Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so -- Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel -- Being--who?
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever There as here!" With these high words he ended a long life, and his memory still falls upon us, like the dew which fell on Paradise.

It was a life lived fully, kindly, lovingly, at its just height from the beginning to the end.

No fear, no vanity, no lack of interest, no complaint of the world, no anger at criticism, no villain fancies disturbed his soul.