In his later period he deviated more and more towards a fragrant lyricism. In his great picture of 1872, "The Harbour of Refuge," the background is formed by one of those peaceful buildings where the aged poor pass the remainder of their days in meditative rest. The sun is sinking, and there is a rising moon. The red-tiled roof stands out clear against the quiet evening sky, while upon the terrace in front, over which the tremulous yellow rays of the setting sun are shed, an old woman with a bowed figure is walking, guided by a graceful girl who steps lightly forward. It is the old contrast between day and night, youth and age, strength and decay. Yet in Walker there is no opposition after all. For as light mingles with the shadows in the twilight, this young and vigorous woman who paces in the evening, holding the arm of the aged in mysterious silence, has at the moment no sense of her youth, but is rather filled with that melancholy thought underlying Goethe's "_Warte nur balde_," "Wait awhile and thou shalt rest too." Her eyes have a strange gaze, as though she were looking into vacancy in mere absence of mind. And upon the other side of the picture this theme of the transient life of humanity is still further developed. Upon a bench in the midst of a verdant lawn covered with daisies a group of old men are sitting meditatively near a hedge of hawthorn luxuriant in blossom. Above the bench there stands an old statue casting a clearly defined shadow upon the gravel path, as if to point to the contrast between imperishable stone and the unstable race of men, fading away like the autumn leaves. Well in the foreground a labourer is mowing down the tender spring grass with a scythe--a strange, wild, and rugged figure, a reaper whose name is Death.
It was not long before evening drew on for the painter, and Death, the mighty reaper, laid him low.
Of a nervous and sensitive temperament, Walker had one of those natures which find their way with difficulty through this rude world of fact. Those little things which he had the art of painting so beautifully, and which occupy such an important place in his work, had, in another sense, more influence upon his life than ought to have been the case. While Mason faced all unpleasantnesses with stoical indifference, Walker allowed himself to be disturbed and hindered in his work by every failure and every sharp wind of criticism. In addition to that he was, like Mason, a victim of consumption. A residence in Algiers merely banished the insidious disease for a short time. Amongst the last works, which he exhibited in 1875, a considerable stir was made by a drawing called "The Unknown Land": a vessel with naked men is drawing near the shores of a wide and peaceful island bathed in a magical light. Soon afterwards Walker had himself departed to that unknown land: he died in Scotland when he was five-and-thirty. His body was brought to the little churchyard at Cookham on the banks of the Thames. In this village Fred Walker is buried amid the fair river landscape which he so loved and so often painted.