Later Years
As the war had ended with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and the United States, operating under the Articles of Confederation, resisted any significant action with respect to Vermont, Allen's historic role as an agitator became less important, and his public role in Vermont's affairs declined. Vermont's government had also become more than a clique dominated by the Allen and Chittenden families due to the territory's rapid population growth.
In 1782, Allen's brother Heber died at the relatively young age of 38. Allen's wife Mary died in June 1783 of consumption, to be followed several months later by their first-born daughter Loraine. While they had not always been close, and Allen's marriage had often been strained, Allen felt these losses deeply. A poem he wrote memorializing Mary was published in the Bennington Gazette.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)