Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest alongside his slain brothers at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday evening.
Crowds lined up in two U.S. cities to mark the end of a political era, first in Boston for Kennedy's funeral, and then in Washington, where the long-serving senator was carried through to his final resting place in Virginia.
Flag flew at half-mast throughout the Capitol, and Kennedy's hearse stopped outside the Senate, where he spent more than half his life in office.
"Go now, to your place of rest. And meet the Lord, your God," Rev. Daniel Coughlin, the House chaplain, said.
Kennedy's gravesite was flanked by a pair of maple trees. His brother Robert, assassinated in 1968, lies 30 metres away. Another 30 metres away is the eternal flame that was lit in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy was gunned down.
Kennedy, the youngest brother in the famed family, died at 77 after battling with brain cancer for more than a year.
Despite his many accomplishments and acclamations, his grave is simply marked, "Edward Moore Kennedy 1932-2009."
U.S. President Barack Obama remembered Kennedy as the "lion of the United States Senate" during a funeral mass in Boston Saturday attended by former presidents and both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.
During a eulogy that began more than two hours into the service, Obama hailed Kennedy as, "the champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party and the lion of the United States Senate."
Calling Kennedy, "the baby of the family who became its patriarch, a restless dreamer who became its rock," Obama noted his commitment to his family as well as to public service despite a series of personal tragedies: losing two brothers before the age of 16 and two more before age 40; burying three nephews; enduring painful injuries in a plane crash; and watching two children struggle with cancer.
"It's a string of events that would have broken a lesser man," Obama said. "It would have been easy for Ted to let himself become bitter and hardened, to surrender to self-pity and regret, to retreat from public life to live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that. But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves."
Obama said that through his own suffering, Kennedy became more aware of, and willing to alleviate, the suffering of others.
"Ted Kennedy's life work was not to champion the causes of those with wealth or power or special connections," Obama said. "It was to give a voice to those who were not heard, to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity, to make real the dream of our founders."
His flag-draped casket was carried in to a packed Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston at 10:30 a.m., wrapped tightly in plastic to protect it from a driving rain. It was carried from a black hearse and into the church by eight servicemen after its journey from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, where family members held a prayer service before making their way to the church.
A number of the 1,500 guests saluted, while others made the sign of the cross, as the casket was carried in to the church, past former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
About 58 U.S. senators, 21 former senators and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was once an aide to Kennedy, were also in attendance. Representatives from Northern Ireland were also present, including secretary of state Shaun Woodward and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
Hollywood legends such as Tony Bennett and Jack Nicholson were also seen at the Roman Catholic Mass, which was presided over by seven priests, and included 11 pallbearers and 29 honorary pallbearers.
Tenor Placido Domingo sang the hymn Panis Angelicus, accompanied by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Obama spoke after Kennedy's two sons, who praised their father's loving and devoted attention, as well as his perseverance in the face of personal loss.
"My father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable," Ted Kennedy, Jr. -- who lost a leg to bone cancer when he was 12 years old -- said during an eloquent and tearful speech. "And it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father's greatest lessons. He taught me that nothing is impossible."
Kennedy, Jr., hailed his father not only as a politician, but a skipper, an accomplished painter, an adventurer, a mountain climber and a dog lover, joking, "our family vacations left us all injured and exhausted."
Rep. Patrick Kennedy remembered that his father took lessons from the sailing world and applied them to politics.
"One thing I noticed was that on the boat as in this country, there was a role for everybody, a place for everybody to contribute," he said. "In the race as in life, it didn't matter how strong the forces against you were, as long as you kept driving forward."
Peter Kent, minister of state of foreign affairs, represented the Canadian government at Kennedy's funeral.
"There was a real sense of joy through the entire service" that reflected "the completion of a magnificent life," Kent told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel.
"Senator Kennedy was indeed a friend of our country," Kent said. "I think every politician can learn from his ability to make deals, to put partisanship aside when it needs to be put aside."
Kennedy's work to continue
Ted Kennedy took over the Massachusetts senate seat vacated by his brother, John F. Kennedy, when he became president.
The youngest of the Kennedy clan, Teddy, as he was commonly known, was first elected to the Senate in 1962.
Over his 47-year career, he became one of the most prolific legislators in the history of the U.S. Senate, introducing or helping to shape more than 1,000 bills, Obama noted.
He was a passionate advocate for health-care reform, a fight that Obama has taken over with a massive health-care bill he is trying to push through Congress.
At a private memorial service on Friday, Senator John Kerry, also a Massachusetts Democrat, vowed that members of Congress would carry on Kennedy's work.
"He laboured with all his might to make health care a right for all America, and we will do that in his honour," Kerry said.
While he gained tremendous respect as a senator, Kennedy also had to endure a number of personal tragedies that cemented his role as family eulogist, and father-figure to a number of nieces and nephews.
He delivered eulogies for his brother, Robert, who was gunned down during his run for the presidency in 1968, and his nephew, John Kennedy Jr., who was killed in a plane crash in 1999 alongside his wife and sister-in-law.
At John Jr.'s funeral, Kennedy eloquently said the family, "dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb grey hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years."
With files from The Associated Press
