9 o 



Tiffany bronze tablet at the gorge and for an inspection of the 

 exhibition of works by and relating to Drake in the Society'? 

 museum in the Mansion above the gorge. 



At the unveiling exercises in the Bronx Park gorge, Mr. 

 Davis, as chairman of the Council, spoke as follows : 

 Friends of the Beautiful in Nature and in Language: 



Thinking in the ideal, expressing the workings of imagina- 

 tive minds, poets live at an altitude and breathe an atmosphere 

 far removed from the valley of fog wherein the struggling 

 millions wear their lives away. 



" Pained with the pressure of unfriendly hands, 

 Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness " 



they fail to find in their fellows that responsive sympathy and 

 understanding which their spirits crave, and seek solace in 

 these 



" shades where none intrude, 



To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude." 



The frail body of him whom we honor today yielded up its 

 spirit at the early age of twenty-five. Too young to have 

 experienced much of the bitterness of life, of gentle manners 

 and winning ways, yet even this amiable young man, so well 

 beloved by his fellows as we know him to have been, found 

 in this river "a face more pleasant than the face of men," 

 and in its waves found "old companions." 



A century ago Drake loved to come and sit upon these 

 banks ; he loved this " gentle river " ; talked to it as though it 

 understood him; called it "my own romantic Bronx." 



Many thousands, in the intervening years, have come and 

 sat upon these banks, have looked upon this river and have 

 here found that respite from the troubles of a weary life 

 which makes existence more endurable. 



His master-piece a fairy-tale, no wonder Drake was charmed 

 by this fairyland of sylvan loveliness ! Under the spell of its 

 magic beauty, as we stand here today and look around us, it 

 requires no poet's imagination to appreciate his poetic ecstasy: 



