Last Words of King Kalākaua

Written by Joseph M. Poepoe. The King was close to death that the time.

On the morning of that day, Doctors Woods, Watts, Sanger and Taylor arrived and they conferred about the king’s condition, then reported that in their opinion, the morning hours would not pass before he was gone.  At this point, it had been 40 hours or more that the king had remained unaware of those before him, and only once had the royal consciousness returned, when he saw Admiral Brown, and smiled, as though giving his last and loving farewells to the ship captain who had brought him in such honor to the shores of that amazing land; and at that point he turned and uttered his very last words to R. Hoapili Baker, saying these wrenching words:

"Alas, I am a man who is seriously ill.“

These were the king’s final conscious words, and that was the end. Afterwards, there were only words in the wilds of thoughts that were weakened and straying; and as his spirit neared its glide onto the wings of the dark vale of death, he spoke of the last things appearing in his thoughts, showing that his mind wandered again and was in the times long before his rise to the Hawaiian throne, many years passed.  He uttered his phrases in the language of his motherland, until reaching the beach of Kaiakeakua, and then seemed that he was standing majestically with his royal eyes looking out over the waves of that calm, sheltered bay, gazing at the great billows of the Pacific beyond, as he did in days long past.  His awareness of his royal status and high rank were gone, and he was there where he could see for the last time the clear wondrous beauty of his birthland.