UC-NRLF ^B 113 SbM v;s :J^\ m. AMERlCAN^i POETS AND I THE 11^ M THEOLOGY ^^ ^td4; A Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation tittp://www.archive.org/details/americanpoetstheOOstrorich AMERICAN POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY AMERICAN POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY BY AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG D. D., LL. D., LITT. D. PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY," "SYSTEM- ATIC THEOLOGY, " "PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION," " CHRIST IN CREATION," "MISCELLANIES," " CHAPEL-TALKS," AND "LECTURES ON THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT " PHILADELPHIA THE GRIFFITH AND ROWLAND PRESS BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS LOS ANGELES TORONTO, CAN. MCMXVI < Copyright 1916 by A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary Published December, 1916 PREFACE Some years ago I printed a volume entitled " The Great Poets and Their Theology." I gave account of Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Browning, and Tennyson. The volume had some currency, and I was asked by the publishers to prepare another book on " American Poets and Their Theology." After a little consideration I declined, upon the ground that American poets had no theology. Most of them being spokes of " The Hub," Harvard men, and Unitarians, I unwisely took it for granted that their theology was either nebulous or nil. When I demitted my office as president of a seminary and pro- fessor of theology, this old proposition recurred to me, and I considered the question anew. I concluded to make trial of Bryant, since he was the real founder of our poetic line. To my surprise and gratification I found that his poems contained a large amount of the- ology, and that of a very respectable sort — for he never wholly escaped the influence of his early Calvinistic training. This discovery emboldened me to go on to Emerson, in whom I encountered a teacher of a very different type, whom I was obliged severely to criti- cize. But when I came to Whittier, I was again en- couraged ; and I did not stop my work until Poe, Long- fellow, Lowell, Holmes, Lanier, and Whitman had come under review. These poets represent various V 34596G VI PREFACE phases of poetic art, and almost as many phases of theological belief. By turns I have praised and have condemned; but, as I trust, with constant effort to utter only truth. It will be readily perceived that the standard by which these poets are tried is that of the evangelical faith; and by the evangelical faith I mean modified Calvinism, or the theology of the New Testament. I do not scruple to add that, to my mind, that theology is most fully presented to us in the writings of the apostles Paul and John. I regard these writings, how- ever, as only the posthumous works of our Lord him- self, and as the fulfilment of his promise that his Spirit should lead his followers into all the truth. So far as I know, our American poets have never been sys- tematically subjected to this standard of judgment. There have been books in plenty which have estimated their work as simple poetry ; but there have been none which have asked every poet to justify his theology by comparing it with divine revelation. The result has been that the charm of the poetry has often blinded the reader to its skeptical tendencies, even if it has not subtly undermined his religious faith. I have thought it a service to the church and to the truth to point out the shortcomings, if not the positively erroneous teach- ings, of some of our poets, while at the same time I drew attention to the correct and uplifting doctrine of others. I have conducted my investigation with a pro- found belief in the deity and the atonement of Jesus Christ, and I have tried, by applying his revealed stand- ards, to anticipate his final judgment. How far I have succeeded, my readers will judge for themselves. I PREFACE Vii shall be content to receive even their disapproving ver- dict, if I may only at the last hear the Master say, ''Well done!" An old-fashioned theologian will be pardoned for indulging in proof-texts. Mere description of a poet's views would fail to convince the reader of its justice, if it were not accompanied by definite quotations from the poet's writings. I have therefore furnished ex- cerpts wherever this was possible. As in the case of proof-texts from Scripture, there is danger that the extract, in separation from its context, may give wrong impressions of its real meaning. I have tried to fortify my interpretations by references to each poet's " Life and Letters." Proof-texts, thus interpreted, express the substance of a document more clearly than the or- dinary reader would gather it from the document as a whole. The ordinary reader, at least, will be grateful to me for saving his labor and time, while the critic will all the more enjoy his comparison of the quota- tions with the originals. With the single additional proviso that my aim is the limited one of exhibiting not so much the poetical as the theological merits and demerits of the writers whom I describe, I commit my work to the candid consideration of all who love truth in literature. It is my humble offering to Christ and to the world on my eightieth birthday. Augustus Hopkins Strong. Rochester, August 3, 19 16. NOTE The thanks of the author are especially due to Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized pub- lishers of the poems of Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes, by permission of, and arrange- ment with, whom so many quotations have been made from these poems; to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for similar permission to quote from the poems of Bryant ; to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, in the case of La- nier ; and to David McKay, the publisher of Whitman's '' Leaves of Grass," for the same courtesy. CONTENTS WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT I-48 Poetry a belated product of American soil 3 William Cullen Bryant our first real poet 4 He came of sturdy New England stock 5 His birthplace, and his early discipline 6 Educational influence of the times 7 A natural linguist, but with little college training. 7 Indebtedness to his father, and dawn of poetical ambition 8 At eighteen is author of " Thanatopsis " 9 At eighty, of " Ode on Birthday of George Washington " 12 His influence covered a period of fifty-six years. 13 Cowper and Wordsworth his possible models.. 13 Studies law, and practises for nine years 14 Editor of " The Evening Post " in New York City 15 His influence upon American journalism 16 Untiring energy, and its physical conditions.. 18 Foundation of his character was his belief in God 19 His poetry not intentionally theological 20 As poet of nature, compared with Wordsworth. 21 Saw a personal God in beauty and grandeur of the world 22 Recognized the sinfulness of humanity , 23 Human sinfulness touches the divine compas- sion 24 External world beautiful because unfallen 25 God's justice is recognized, but justice is mixed with love 26 ix CONTENTS A vein of humor in Bryant 27 Truth and freedom are not impersonal 28 Address "To a Waterfowl" celebrates divine Providence 29 Declared his reliance on Christ for salvation . . 31 Wrote hymns for public worship 31 Declared the world-wide supremacy of Christ.. 35 Yet we do not read of the Cross in his poetry. 36 An unwavering belief in immortality 36 Poems addressed to his wife 37 Separation caused by death is not lasting 39 Filial piety one of his noblest traits 41 Bryant's limitations : he is descriptive and medi- tative, but never lyric or dramatic 44 Explanation of the somberness of his verse.. 45 He lacked the recognition of a present Christ.. 45 Sees in nature the transcendence, rather than the immanence, of God 46 His translations of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " 47 He brings us " authentic tidings of invisible things " 48 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 49-103 Emerson the heir of eight generations of Puri- tan divines 51 Straitened circumstances, but habitual self- reliance 51 His intellectual "Declaration of Independence". 52 Bryant more simple and intelligible than Emer- son 53 Is Emerson philosopher, poet, or prophet ? 53 He had no system, and his philosophy is eclectic. 54 The poet of transcendentalism, but of trans- scendentalism under bonds to a naturalistic philosophy 54 He begins with nature, instead of beginning with man 55 Nature is necessitated and deterministic will .. 56 CONTENTS XI Transcendentalism is a compound of English idealism, German intuitionalism, and Oriental immanence 56 His idealism led to pantheism, rather than to theism 57 His intuitionalism made the inner light an ex- clusive source of knowledge 58 Emerson's intuitions are colored by finiteness and sin 60 They need to be corrected by positive revela- tion 60 The immanence taught is an impersonal im- manence 63 Compare with it the immanence of Christ, as taught by Jonathan Edwards 65 He lacked humility and the sense of sin 66 Regarded sin as a necessity, always resulting in good 67 A discord necessary to perfect harmony 70 The remedy of evil is in self, not in God 71 The poet is simply the emancipated man ^2> Emerson is neither simple, sensuous, nor pas- sionate 74 He has the substance of poetry, without its form 75 He shows an open heaven and a present God . . 76 But this God is indistinguishable from ourselves. 76 This God does not hear or answer prayer 78 Yet Emerson's positive doctrine of individuality is valuable 80 Painfully slighting allusions to Jesus 81 He left the ministry because he could not wor- ship Jesus 83 His message became the fallible message of a human seer 84 His optimism is a pantheistic denial of any moral evil 84 The evangelization of men did not interest him. 88 Yet all the good in his doctrine came from Christ 89 We praise his recognition of spirit in matter.. 89 Xll CONTENTS An apostle of human freedom only in the ab- stract 91 He was slow to oppose secession of our South- ern States 93 Conceived of Christianity as a merely ethical philosophy 94 No clear belief in personal immortality 95 His personal characteristics, physical and men- tal 97 A monist, but not an ethical monist 100 His burial in the great Cathedral of Nature . . 103 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER IO5-I58 Of all our poets, the most American 107 Profoundly and pervasively religious 107 An Orthodox Quaker 108 The inner light tested and corrected by Scrip- ture 109 Protested against Puritan intolerance no Revolt held in check by his principles of peace. . in His description of Quaker life and doctrine .. 112 His inner light differed from Emerson's 114 Early surroundings and privations 115 His reading wakened an intense love of litera- ture 116 An early poem attracted the attention of Gar- rison 117 His first poetry was journalistic 117 Garrison summoned him to join the abolitionists. 119 He gave himself to the anti-slavery cause 120 And paid the penalty of ostracism and poverty. 121 His differences with Garrison 124 His scathing fulmination against Daniel Web- ster 125 But subsequent compassion, in " The Lost Oc- casion " 126 Corrects the early faults of his poetry 127 Public favor and freedom from financial care. . 128 His faith in evangelical truth shown in his hymns - 130 CONTENTS XIU His one book was the Bible 131 He believed in a personal God of justice and of love 132 Penalty is always disciplinary and remedial . . . 134 Illustrated by the mother's training of her child. 136 Genuine conviction of sin at the basis of his poetry 137 Sin and suffering are inseparable 138 In Christ alone he trusts for himself and for others 139 God is one; Christ is the same eternal One; The Holy Spirit . is the same Christ mani- fested within us 140 A practical view of the Trinity, possibly Sa- bellian 141 His acceptance of Christ's sacrifice on his be- ^half 142 The mercy of God is his only hope 143 Not so far away from Calvinism as he thought. 145 Faith in the ultimate triumph of goodness 146 Yet he is not a Universalist 147 Feared for the lost, not outward punishment, but inward suffering 148 Firm faith in personal immortality, unlike Emerson 149 His genius was rustic and homely, but conse- crated to God 151 A natural balladist, in " Barbara Frietchie " and "Maud Muller" 152 Prosperity and comfort crowned his latter days. 153 " The end of that man was peace " 154 The secret of his life was his humble faith in God 157 EDGAR ALLAN POE 1 59-2o6 Whittier and Poe both unlike and like 161 Griswold's conclusions have been essentially justified 163 Poe's ancestry and early training 163 His schooling in England 165 XIV CONTENTS His earliest verses striking and melodious i66 His dissipated life at college i68 Two years in the army, under an assumed name. 169 A few months in the West Point Military Academy 169 His patron casts him off, and he becomes in- temperate 170 His inordinate desire for literary fame 171 He prints " Tamerlane " and " Al Aaraaf "... 171 His early poetry lacks unity and rationality . . 174 First successful work is his prose " Tales of the Arabesque and the Grotesque " 174 These are tales of the charnel-house, and they aim to startle 175 Poe becomes an editor and a critic unduly harsh 176 The illness and death of his young wife 177 Commemorated in his poem "Annabel Lee" .. 178 Regarded himself as a victim, not as a criminal 179 His miserable death in Baltimore 181 A professed atheist, he still fears God's judg- ment 182 Conceit of his own powers blinded him 183 His theology declared in his prose poem, "Eureka" 184 He regarded mind as a sensitive form of matter. 184 We are parts of God, and shall ourselves be- come God 186 God is only material force, without intelligence or love 187 Truth and goodness are by-products of beauty.. 188 Poetry is the expression of merely physical loveliness 188 There is no standard of beauty, and beauty is lost 189 He reveled in abnormal and revolting incidents. 191 Dealt in the "witchery of words," as in his poem " The Bells " : . . . 192 His essays : " The Poetic Principle," " The Phi- losophy of Composition," and " The Rationale of Verse" 194 CONTENTS XV Mastery of technique, but ever-gathering gloom. 198 "The Haunted Palace" a picture of Poe's own soul 201 A haunting melody is not the highest poetry.. 202 To satisfy the mind, substance must equal form. 202 His poetiy is melody without truth and with- out love 203 Quotations from Griswold and from Tennyson. 203 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 207-263 Great influence of Longfellow upon young men of the last generation 209 Of all our American poets the most beloved . . 210 His family and his early home 210 His indebtedness to Irving and to Bryant 212 Hawthorne, Abbott, and Pierce his college mates at Bowdoin 213 Indians of Maine suggested his future "Hia- watha " 213 Early verses and literary ambition 214 Professorship of Modern Languages, and three years abroad 215 " Outre-Mer " his first work in prose 218 Appointment to Harvard, marriage, and death of his wife 219 "Hyperion" shows growing originality and unity 221 Swings off from federal theology to Unitarian- ism 222 Though unevangelical, still a Christian poet . . . 223 Discovers his vocation, and prints " The Voices of the Night " 225 Influence of "A Psalm of Life" soothing and inspiring 226 His second marriage, noble house, and liberal hospitality 226 Loss of his wife leads to his translation of Dante 228 1843 to 1861 his most productive years 229 XVI CONTENTS Most successful in his shorter poems 231 "Evangeline" and "The Song of Hiawatha".. 231 "The Courtship of Miles Standish " 234 " Christus " lacks intensity and condensation . . 234 Its main defect an insufficient estimate of Jesus Christ 235 Without proper knowledge of divine holiness and human sin 236 As far from skepticism as from mysticism . . . 238 Growing tendency to a pagan view of the world. 239 " Hermes Trismegistus " indicates a final ag- nostic attitude 241 "Poems on Slavery" did not please abolition- ists 243 Our poet of national Union and of universal Peace 244 His genius representative, rather than creative. 246 "Michael Angelo " is almost autobiographical. 246 His gentle and kindly spirit shown in his rela- tion to others 250 Though not professedly or demonstratively Christian 253 Faith in an overruling divine Providence 254 "Morituri Salutamus " gives his thoughts in view of death 255 Faith in immortality strongest in his early poems 256 Would have been a greater poet, if he had rightly understood God's holiness, man's sin, and Christ's atonement 261 His last days sunny and genial 262 His bust in Westminster Abbey intimates that he is a poet of the whole English-speaking race 263 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 265-317 Lowell is our chief poetical moralist 267 Hampered by the brilliancy of his genius 267 His ethics took the form of patriotism 268 CONTENTS XVll Parentage and education give him a bent to literature 268 Marriage stimulates his moral impulses, 271 His first book of poems full of allusions to his inamorata 272 Her early death makes him serious and sympa- thetic 273 Begins a series of prose essays on English dramatists 274 " Biglow Papers," " Fable for Critics," " Sir Launfal " 274 Poems suggested by domestic sorrow 275 Growth of the ethical principle in his mind and writing 277 His interest turning from literature to politics. 280 The " Biglow Papers " his greatest work 282 They showed the true greatness of the Yankee stock 284 These dialect poems first made him famous , . 285 Appointed professor in Harvard College 289 His " Commemoration Ode " and " Concord Bridge " 291 Second marriage, and editorship of "The At- lantic Monthly " 292 Minister to Madrid, and in 1880 to London — 293 His wit was a large part of his endowment . . 293 His public addresses sane and statesmanlike, . . 294 "The Cathedral" recognizes an indwelling God, but not one transcendent 295 Therefore does not believe in miracle or special revelation 295 An error as to man's moral condition and need. 296 An unmoral God needs no Mediator and no di- vine Saviour 298 Each man is his own redeemer 299 Lowell's " Cathedral " compared with Brown- ing's " Saul " 300 Religion gives him little comfort in bereave- ment 301 His future life has no connection with Christ.. 302 He has missed the true theory of morals 303 B XVlll CONTENTS Gives us detached maxims, without foundation, motive, or life 303 Bible preaching, not moralistic poetry, carried us through our Civil War 304 Denies special inspiration, but all men are in- spired 305 God is only another name for nature 306 On capital punishment, Lowell compared with Wordsworth 308 His wit misplaced when he ridicules the Cross. 309 Wrongly fancied that ethics drew him away from poetry 311 Better theology would have made him a better poet 312 The good in his poetry rests on an inherited Christian faith 313 Greater as essayist than as poet 314 Warmth of affection shown in poems addressed to friends 314 He estimates himself truly in his "Fable for Critics " 316 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES . . Z^9-Z^7 Holmes is our poetical humorist 321 Fortunate in his parentage and early training. 322 In his boyhood conceives a great dislike for Calvinism 324 Andover Academy and Harvard College 325 His long series of class-poems 326 Versifying began before he had learned to write 328 " Old Ironsides " and " The Last Leaf " never afterward surpassed 329 Studies medicine, and spends two years in Paris. 331 Begins medical practice in Boston, which lasts twelve years 332 Professor of anatomy at Harvard for thirty- five years 333 CONTENTS XIX His "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" makes him famous 334 Charles Eliot Norton's characterization of Holmes 334 His mind discursive, rather than philosophic . . . 335 " The Deacon's Masterpiece " and " The Cham- bered Nautilus " 336 Encouraged to venture upon novel literature.. 338 His novels are " novels with a purpose," and that purpose is the confutation of Calvinism. 339 Holds that inherited tendencies to evil are not moral 339 Opposes hyper-Calvinism, rather than Calvinism . 341 Scripture and philosophy are against Holmes.. 342 He understood neither the evil nor the remedy. 343 Regarded Christ as an example, but not as a Saviour 343 Holmes shows the downward gravitation of Unitarianism 344 Evangelical faith the only alternative to agnos- ticism 346 Holmes's hymns are hymns to the God of na- ture 346 The fatalistic inheritance of physical evil throws the blame of it back upon God 349 Bitterness of Holmes's theological animus 350 Somewhat excused by extravagancies of hyper- Calvinists 351 The ethical fruits of his doctrine 352 He shrank from the reform movements of his time 353 As far from transcendentalism as from aboli- tionism 356 His "Life of Emerson" and "Memoir of Motley " 357 Poems at public dinners, and tributes to friends. 359 An entertainer, rather than a teacher 362 A poet of this life, not of the life to come . . . 362 His humor lasted to old age 363 Lowell's characterization of the poet and the man .^ 367 XX CONTENTS SIDNEY LANIER 369-418 The relation between poetry and music 371 Lanier was primarily a musician, secondarily a poet 371 Our chief poetical musician 372 Lanier and Poe, their resemblances and their differences 372 Lanier's passion for music, and his mastery of the flute 374 His devotion to poetry came late in his devel- opment 375 College course, religious nature, and struggles to learn his duty 376 His Christian faith confirmed by study of science 377 Outbreak of the Civil War arrests his scho- lastic work 378 Three years in the Confederate Army, and final capture and imprisonment weaken his consti- tution 379 Desperate illness, and hemorrhage of the lungs. 381 Marriage, practice of law, dawn of poetical ambition 381 Love-poems addressed to his wife 383 " The Jacquerie," the longest of his poems, but a fragment 384 " Resurrection " and " A Ballad of Trees and the Master" 385 Position in the Symphony Orchestra of Balti- more 387 For eight years a heroic fight with death 387 His poem " Com " first brings him into public notice 387 "The Symphony" leads to his appointment to write the " Centennial Cantata " 390 A poem to be sung, not read, it is severely criticized 390 Launched on a literary career, but handicapped by disease 392 CONTENTS XXI " The Marshes of Glynn " often called his best production 393 " Individuality " shows faith in a moral self- hood 395 Lectures at Johns Hopkins University 396 " The beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing " 397 His " Science of English Verse " interprets the forms of poetry in terms of music 397 Makes rhythm consist in time rather than in accent 397 Music too much dominated his poetry 399 Christian faith implicit in his poems 400 God's love enables us to face the problem of sin 401 " How Love Looked for Hell " incorrectly makes sin furnish its own remedy 404 His strong faith in immortality 405 " The Crystal " is his greatest poem 407 Its characterizations of great names in litera- ture show him to be a natural critic 408 His affection for his friends, and his optimism. 410 He applied the scientific method to the study of poetry 414 His indomitable spirit persisted to the end . . . 415 A noble poetic gift in process of development.. 416 Its premature ending on earth argues a life beyond 417 WALT WHITMAN 419-470 Difficulty in finding a ninth poet 421 Whitman's significant choice of the nickname " Walt " 421 The poet considered from three points of view : his art, his morality, and his religion 422 Poetry must have a correct view of nature . . . 423 Free-verse is not necessarily poetry 423 It needs to have a true philosophy underlying it. 424 The early life of Whitman as a preparation for his writing 425 XXll CONTENTS His tour of our Southern States, and its free- dom from restraint 426 Returning home, he gives himself to poetry and not to prose 427 Two sources of his philosophy, Elias Hicks and Ralph Waldo Emerson 428 The influence of Quakerism upon his method of thought 428 The influence of transcendentalism upon his thinking 428 The poet regards his own personality as ex- pressing the All 429 Emerson commends " Leaves of Grass " to the general public 430 Whitman persists in his method in spite of Emerson's criticisms 431 A pantheistic philosophy degrades the form of art 433 Free-verse is an undeveloped and lower kind of poetry 433 " O Captain ! my Captain ! " is Whitman's high- est achievement 434 The poet's egotism also impairs the value of his art 435 He could not tell the commonplace from the inspired 436 His glorification of the body makes his poems often immoral 436 He chooses a non-moral in place of a moral God 439 He confesses to being the father of six illegiti- mate children 439 Awakens suspicion of even more serious lapses from virtue 440 His " comradeship " was of a peculiar sort . . . 442 How far are bodily organs the proper subjects of poetry? 443 Whitman exalted obscenity into a principle . . . 443 Yet noted literary men praised his work 444 Our Civil War made Whitman democratic and sympathetic 445 CONTENTS XXlll His care for the sick and wounded 445 Stricken with paralysis he retires to Camden . . 447 After eighteen years of ascetic living he breathes his last 447 His democracy is freedom without law 450 The influence of music upon his verse 452 He claimed to be the founder of a new religion. 453 It was a religion of affectionate impulse with- out moral law or a personal God 453 His aversion to preachers and churches 455 Self-deifying, he makes Jehovah, Christ, Satan, and the Holy Spirit, to be all and equally manifestations of his life 458 His instinct of immortality is indefinite though strong 462 Evolution cannot furnish the certainty of a happy future 463 Only one poem shows belief in a righteous God or in retribution for evil-doing 466 " Heavenly Death " therefore is the only savior. 467 Walt Whitman is a poet only in the sense of giving us the materials for poetry •. 468 His verse divorces liberty from law, and makes the highest poetry impossible 469 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT There are patriotic people who maintain that America is the predestined home of poetry. They point to little Greece, with her rocky cliffs and bosky vales, her purple hills and encircling isles, and ask triumphantly if Greece was not the natural habitat of liberty and beauty. When we assent, they argue a fortiori that our great continent was even more mani- festly ordained to nourish the largest and most precious growths of the human mind. Poetry is one of those largest and most precious growths, for it is the rhyth- mical expression of the world's meaning, in thoughts that breathe and words that burn. Poetry therefore must be native to America. The argument would do credit to Henry Thomas Buckle, who attributes civilization wholly to environ- ment. But it is not convincing. Unfortunately, per- haps, poetry needs for its production something more than bigness of territory or sublimity of scenery. Switzerland has giant and snow-crowned peaks, but she has never had a great poet. Our own mountain ranges and untrodden forests, our prairie cyclones and river floods, furnish proper surroundings, but they do not furnish the needed inspiration. Our struggles with Indian ferocity and British tyranny, our combi- 3 4 l^OKTkY A BELATED PRODUCT OF AMERICA nation of civil freedom with civil union, give us sub- jects for poetry, but not the genius to treat them. A nation of Gradgrincls would still value Niagara only for its water-power, and would be entirely content with prose. As a matter of fact, poetry was a belated product of the American soil. We may possibly explain this by remembering that The Pilgrim bands, who passed the sea to keep Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone, In his wide temple of the wilderness^ were Puritans of the most straitest sect, many of whom thought love for nature a dangerous rival to \ love for God. The clearing of forests and the fear of savage aggression, moreover, occupied their thoughts. The Bay Psalm Book was the nearest approach to poetical expression, and that was wholly religious. .Grotesque and unmelodious as it was, it witnessed that the instinct of poetry still survived, and that men can- not long live without some such exercise of the imagi- nation. Most wonderful it is that, after such bare and unpromising beginnings, there should have suddenly appeared the true father of American literature, the first real poet of our Western world. We wonder when we see the sun of Homer rising upon the darkness of Hellenic times; we may quite as justly wonder when we find the bizarre and tasteless lines of Trumbull and Barlow succeeded by the mature and lofty verse of William Cullen Bryant. Yet even this prodigy was rooted in the past. 1 Bryant, " The Burial-place." C^ BRYANT S ANCESTRY 5 Though the poetic afflatus was an original and divine endowment, heredity and environment prepared the way for its expression. The poet came of a sturdy New England stock. His father and his father's father were physicians. His mother was a woman of energy and piety, who taught her son to love and to repeat the hymns of Isaac Watts. She hated drunken- ness and lying. The father was a born naturalist. He taught his son botany and woodcraft, as well as love for good literature. For the time in which he lived, Doctor Bryant was a man of large and liberal mind. He was for several sessions member of the lower house of the Massachusetts Legislature, and once at least he was a member of the Senate. His visits to Boston and his acquaintance with public men made him the oracle of his town, though his serene nature prevented any pretense of superiority. He was careful of his dress, and was sometimes taken for a city resi- dent, spending his holiday in the country. His physical strength was such that, though not of great stature, he could put his barrel of cider over the wheel into the wagon. Since his own father was a physician, his ambition was to have a son who should be a physician also, and with that hope he named his second son William Cullen, after the then celebrated physician of Edinburgh. The boy was evidently well endowed in body. His only defect in childhood seems to have been a bigness of head, which the father sought to reduce, by plung- ing him each morning into a spring of cold water. He was born at Cummington, a little hamlet hid away among the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts. O BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY DISCIPLINE The first pioneer had built his cabin there only thirty years before, and it was in a log house that William first saw the light. That log house has long since vanished from the scene, but the tradition of it still remains, in spite of the commodious mansion which after a time took its place and became the poet's coun- try resort. Robert Burns was born in a hovel, but Scottish minstrelsy preceded him. William Cullen Bryant owed more than Burns to his early education. His first schoolhouse was built of logs, but pedagogy in those days meant severe discipline, and the three R's were ground into the very fiber of his being. He was in- dustrious and meditative. His natural habit of seclu- sion was fostered by the presence and influence, in the family, of his mother's father, Ebenezer Snell, an awe- inspiring patriarch, who frowned on all frivolity in the children. Grandfather Snell was a magistrate, under whose administration Bryant remembered seeing forty lashes inflicted upon a young fellow of eighteen for theft. A bundle of birchen twigs hung beside the chimney of the old log house, as an indispensable part of the kitchen furniture, and as a warning to evil-doers ; and such rods boys often had to gather for their own castigation. But there were also books. Bryant traced back his poetical gift to his great-grandfather, Doctor Howard, who had opportunely left a large part of his library to his descendants. The boy devoured " The Pilgrim's Progress " and " Robinson Crusoe." Pope, Gray, and Goldsmith were his father's posses- sions, and these served to mitigate the influence of Anne Bradstreet and other New England poetasters. EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 7 We must not forget the educational influence of the times. Though Bryant was born in 1794, when the war of the Revolution was over, the survivors of that war were still in evidence, and stories of the Boston Tea-party and of Bunker Hill, of Saratoga and Valley Forge, were the chief entertainments of the fireside. There was no theater or circus, but the militia-muster, the husking-bee, the apple-paring, the barn-raising, and the maple-sugar camp furnished healthful excitement to the young folk of the community. The love of coun- try flourished side by side with the love of nature. The pulpit of that day dealt only with great themes. Heaven and hell were realities that gave light and shade to daily life. Men's thoughts of the outward world and of civil government were interpenetrated by their thoughts of God and of immortality. The poetry of that age must needs be a serious poetry. But the ma- terial was there. The beauty and grandeur of nature, patriotic pride and boundless hope for the country's future, gratitude to God for freedom and faith in God's guidance of the individual and of the State — what nobler sources of poetic inspiration were ever found in any land ? Bryant was a natural linguist. At sixteen months, he knew all the letters of the alphabet At the age of fourteen he began Latin with his uncle, Rev. Dr. Thomas Snell, of Brookfield, and in eighteen months he had read enough Latin to fit him for admission to college at an advanced standing. At fifteen he began Greek with Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, and in two months he had read through the whole Greek Testament. This finished his preparatory studies, and 8 LACK OF COLLEGE TRAINING at sixteen years of age he entered the sophomore class of Williams College. But shyness of nature and straitness of finance limited his stay to seven months. He left college indeed with the hope of finishing his course at Yale. This his father's means did not permit. He contented himself with a year of the classics and the mathematics with his father at home. It was no bad substitute for college training, and Williams Col- lege shortly afterward gave him his degree. To the end of his days Bryant recognized his indebtedness to his father. The father must have perceived his son's bent toward literature, for we read of no more effort to make him a physician. Doctor Bryant was himself inclined to the making of verses, and classical study had taught him correctness and compression. These qualities of style the father communicated to the son. In after years the poet, mourning his father's death, wrote touchingly: For he is in his grave who taught my youth The art of verse, and in the bud of life Offered me to the Muses.^ That year at home, under parental tutelage, with freedom to roam the woods and meditate upon their lessons, was a great year for Bryant, for it witnessed the dawn of his poetical ambition. His mind and heart were awakening, and he himself tells us: I cannot forget with what fervid devotion I worshiped the visions of verse and of fame; Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean, To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame. 3 •' Hymn to Death. Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing, From the gloom of the thicket that over me hung, And the thoughts that awoke, in that rapture of feeling, Were formed into verse as they rose to my tongue.^ In his later years he gives his matured conception of his calHng in the verses entitled " The Poet," and shows us that poetic inspiration does not exclude careful elaboration : Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. And in the poem named " A Lifetime," he dutifully connects the growth of his own mind with the teach- ing of his father : He murmurs his own rude verses As he roams the woods alone; And again I gaze with wonder, His eyes are so like my own. I see him next in his chamber, Where he sits him down to write The rhymes he framed in his ramble, And he cons them with delight. A kindly figure enters, A man of middle age, And points to a line just written, And 'tis blotted from the page. Bryant's earliest productions, however, were only " songs of the mocking-bird," and showed no signs of originality. All the more wonderful it is, that in his eighteenth year he was the author of " Thanatopsis," 3 " I Cannot Forget." C lO " THANATOPSIS " a poem so elevated in thought and so faultless in dic- tion as to give it rank v^ith the world's best literature. " Thanatopsis " was at first a fragment, and its begin- nings go back to the poet's sixteenth year. Up to that time he had written only school-exercises, some of which he had recited to little audiences in the school- house ; besides these there was one college poem, which is of no great account and was apparently gotten up to order. But his days of schooling were now over. He could no longer be dependent upon his father; he must shift for himself. His bent to poetry did not prevent him from perceiving that literature would never fur- nish him with a living; penury has indeed been well defined as the wages of the pen. He began the study of the law at Worthington and at Bridgewater, and at the age of twenty-one was admitted to the bar at Plymouth. But before leaving home to begin these studies, and at the age of eighteen, he completed " Thanatopsis," laid it aside, and apparently forgot it. In his absence. Doctor Bryant rummaged over the contents of a drawer and drew forth the precious document. After reading it hastily, he gave it to a lady friend, and asked her to pass upon its merits. She read it, and burst into tears, and in her weeping the doctor soon joined. They were tears of joy, for they saluted the rise above the horizon of our first poet, one of God's greatest gifts to the New World. Dana, the editor of the " North American Review," thought it could not have been written by an American. The wonder of it was that a youth in his teens could have produced a poem so free from foreign influence, yet so faultless and sublime. Stoddard has called it II " the greatest poem ever written by so young a man." President Mark Hopkins said that Bryant " had the wisdom of age in his youth, and the fire of youth in his age." I have spoken of " Thanatopsis " as " so free from foreign influences." But I cannot wholly agree with George William Curtis, when he pro- nounces it " without a trace of the English masters of the hour." Chadwick is more nearly correct, when he says that Henry Kirke White's " Ode to the Rose- mary," Bishop Porteus's " Death," and Blair's " Grave " all helped to shape the mood out of which " Thanatopsis " came. To my mind it owes yet more to the example and inspiration of Wordsworth, who began to print before Bryant was born. We know that Judge Howe, at Worthington, found Wordsworth in Bryant's hand, and warned him that it would spoil his style. But, thanks to his own native gift, Bryant had his own style, and Wordsworth only stimulated and encouraged it. " Thanatopsis " is a poet's vision of death. The solemn aspects of death are in mind, but they are not funereal. The coming of the inevitable day is nothing dreaded. It is the appointed end of earthly life, and its lesson is expressed in the closing lines of the poem : So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave. Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 12 ^' ODE ON Birthday of Washington *' Early maturity is often the precursor of early decay. But this was not the case with Bryant. His genius was a perennial plant, and he bore fruit even in old age. In his eightieth year he wrote his " Ode on the Birthday of George Washington," of which John Bigelow said that these were " the finest verses ever produced by one so young and yet so old." In some editions this ode is entitled " The Twenty-second of February." As it is brief, I quote it entire: Pale is the February sky, And brief the midday's sunny hours; The wind-swept forest seems to sigh For the sweet time of leaves and flowers. Yet has no month a prouder day, Not even when the summer broods O'er meadows in their fresh array, Or autumn tints the glowing woods. For this chill season now again Brings, in its annual round, the morn When, greatest of the sons of men, Our glorious Washington was born. Lo, where, beneath an icy shield. Calmly the mighty Hudson flows! By snow-clad fell and frozen field, Broadening, the lordly river goes. The wildest storm that sweeps through space. And rends the oak with sudden force, Can raise no ripple on his face, Or slacken his majestic course. Thus, 'mid the wreck of thrones, shall live Unmarred, undimmed, our hero's fame, And years succeeding years shall give Increase of honors to his name. WIDE STRETCH OF BRYANT S ACTIVITY 1 3 This poem, written just before Bryant died, suggests to us the wide stretch of his poetical activity, and its remarkable influence upon American literature. That influence covered a period of fifty-six years. Bryant's youth was the time of Napoleon's conquests, and of his final defeat at Waterloo. He lived through the reigns of Louis Philippe and of Napoleon the Third; through our war of 1812 and our great Civil War; and through the administrations of twelve of our American presidents. He celebrated Lincoln's Procla- mation of Emancipation, and he expressed in pathetic verse the sorrow of the nation at Lincoln's death. His poetry never changed its sober and thoughtful air. The lyric and the impassioned were foreign to him. But interpretations of natural beauty were never lack- ing. He had not the melody of Shelley, nor the intro- spection of Browning, but there were a simplicity and a judicial quality about his verse which made it im- pressive and convincing. Bryant's youth was past before there occurred the so-called Elizabethan revival. Chaucer and Shake- speare did not get their proper hold upon him. If he had models at all, he found them in Cowper and Wordsworth. So we do not find in him the vast vocabulary and deep acquaintance with human passion that are so marked in Shakespeare, nor even Chau- cer's gaiety and breadth of sympathy. The stateliness of Pope and the somberness of Wordsworth made their mark upon him. Yet he avoided the platitudinous sentiment of " The Excursion," and the artistic moral- izing of the " Essay on Man." He was slow to print, and quick to detect doggerel. While his verse is never 14 CORYPHEUS OF AMERICAN POETS brilliant or startling, it never lacks correctness, both in form and substance. Its sincerity commends it. We can never say of Bryant, as has been said of Wordsworth, that his fame v^ould be greater if nine- tenths of his writing had been burned. It is this com- bination of beauty and truth, of insight into nature's meanings and simplicity in the expression of them, that has made Bryant the teacher and corypheus of our American poets. My meaning will be more plain if I quote the words of Emerson and of Longfellow. These great writers had Bryant's verse before them at the very beginning of their literary careers. While Bryant was born in 1794, Emerson's birth was in 1803, and Longfellow's in 1807. Longfellow writes: "He was my master in verse — ten years my senior. His translations from the Spanish rival the originals in beauty." Emerson adds, " He has written some of the best poetry we have had in America." Yet Bryant did not devote himself wholly to poetry. The study of the law was followed by the practice of the law, and he could undoubtedly have succeeded in that profession. First at Plainfield, and then at Great Barrington, legal practice occupied him for nine whole years. During this period his reputation secured for him both readers and hearers. Harvard invited him to deliver its Phi Beta Kappa address, and he responded with his poem, " The Ages," a thoughtful review of the progress of human society, with stirring prophecy of the coming great- ness of America. He writes: Europe is given a prey to sterner fates And writhes in shackles. . . THE LAW EXCHANGED FOR LETTERS 1 5 But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, Save with thy children — thy maternal care, Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on all — These are thy fetters — seas and stormy air Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where. Among thy gallant sons who guard thee well, Thou laugh'st at enemies: who shall then declare The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell! But the law was not his chosen vocation. He be- came disgusted with the technicality and chicanery which often accompanied its practice. He saw himself forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud.* He longed for an opening into some form of literary activity. This was furnished him in the city of New York, where, after a year of work upon a purely literary and short-lived review, he became, first, asso- ciate editor, and then chief editor and owner, of " The Evening Post." The change from country to city was a momentous one. Yet the New York of 1825 was not the New York of to-day. It numbered only 180,000 inhabitants, and the city extended no farther north than Fourth Street. Bryant found much of country scenery within easy reach, for he tells us that he delighted to ramble along the wooded shores of the Hudson above Canal Street. The city, indeed, was solidly built only so far as Canal. City life was not yet differentiated from the * " Green River. l6 EDITOR OF " THE EVENING POST " life of the country. Though the poet was a lawyer, with nine years' experience of litigation and of ming- ling with his kind, he was by nature a modest man, and he hated publicity. In Great Barrington he had held the positions of tithing-man, town clerk, and justice of the peace, with an aggregate compensation of five dollars a year for all the three. For obvious reasons he afterward declined public office. In the great city he gave himself strictly to his business as editor. For forty-six years he followed what he regarded as his peculiar calling. He did more than any other man to elevate the tone of American journal- ism. It greatly needed elevating, as Dickens and Trol- lope have shown us to our sorrow. No one who has reached the age of seventy can remember without shame the personalities and vulgari- ties of the daily press of fifty years ago. Bryant dealt with principles rather than with persons. He was at first a Federalist, because he feared the Jeffersonian tendency to sectionalism and individualism. After a time he became an advocate of Free Trade, because he detested all restrictions upon commerce; indeed, he demonstrated his independence of judgment and the courage of his convictions by standing many years for Free Trade when in all the country he was its only advocate. The same general principle of liberty under law, that made him first a Federalist and then a Demo- crat, led him at last, when the slavery agitation began, to take sides with the Republican party, and with that party he continued to act through the remainder of his life. He was no doctrinaire, like Greeley, and he had not the sarcastic and bitter pen of Godkin, his THE JOURNALIST AND CITIZEN 1 7 successor ; but he was an almost ideal editor, for sound judgment and ability to guide public opinion. We owe him a great debt. If we abhor yellow journalism, it is because he set for us the true standard. He did not cater to popular taste, but aimed to form that taste. Not simply news, but leadership; not mere reflection of the good and evil of the day, but incul- cation of right views in politics, art, and conduct — these were his aims. He loved his work as editor, because it was so impersonal. He could teach men to weigh reasons, instead of being led by passion and prejudice. But he could not be hid. He became known as the first suggester of the present park system of New York, and his statue now very properly stands behind the new building of the Public Library, and facing the park which bears his name. He was the founder of the Century Club, and its president when he died. He was also the founder of the National Academy of Design. He was called upon for ad- dresses in commemoration of Cole the painter, of Cooper the novelist, of Washington Irving, Samuel F. B. Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, Halleck, and last of all, Mazzini. Indeed, it was just after his address in honor of Mazzini that, on entering the house of a friend, " that good gray head that all men knew " fell backward and struck the stone pavement, so that four- teen days afterward Bryant expired. It is calculated that his editorial writing, during the half-century of his connection with " The Evening Post," would fill a hundred octavo volumes of five hun- dred pages each. He wrote upon manifold subjects of politics, history, biography, travel, art; but always 1 8 PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF BRYANT's ENERGY with pellucid clearness and straightforwardness, and with a view to immediate effect. He went seven times to Europe, and made one stay of two years abroad. He was a scholar in several languages, and made trans- lations from Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French poems. He recited Dante in Italian, to match Zachos's recitation of Greek. He engaged in no financial specu- lations, and he never sold his editorial influence to any man or to any party. But he was all the more recog- nized as the leader of the American press, and his business sagacity and success were so great that at his death he left to his family a fortune of half a million dollars. We cannot understand this untiring energy without some knowledge of its physical conditions. Bryant had one of those calm natures to which work seems easy and inevitable. There were no idle hours. Indus- try was bred in the bone. He tells us that his regular practice was to rise at five in summer, and at half past five in winter; to spend the first hour of the day in gymnastic exercise ; then to bathe ; to breakfast mainly on cereals ; to avoid tea and coffee altogether ; to walk three miles each morning to his office, and to reach that office by eight o'clock. The afternoon journal necessitated early hours in its editor. When his edi- torial work was over, he walked home again. But he took no office cares with him. He lived two lives. When the life of the editor closed with the day, the life of the poet began. His house at Roslyn on Long Island was a rural retreat, with forty acres of lawns and trees and shrubs and flowers about it. But within was a library of several thousand books, the sifted and CHARACTER FOUNDED IN BELIEF IN GOD IQ garnered wisdom and product of the ages. Here he luxuriated, and received many a distinguished guest. And here he continued to write poetry, though the pruning-knife and the waste-basket made the final product small. Toward the close of his life it was only on great occasions that he spent a night in his city house. Public dinners always sought him, and he fre- quently attended them. He was not a vegetarian, though he ate little meat ; he was not a total abstainer, but his taking of wine was very rare and very sparing. He never used tobacco, though he provided it for his friends. At the age of eighty, though " a million wrinkles carved his skin," his senses of sight and of hearing were as perfect as when he was a boy. He never wore spectacles, and he was never confined to his bed by illness. His only answer, as to the secret of this wonderful endurance, was the one word, " Mod- eration." But he was more than an editor, and more than a poet; he was a man. The foundation of his indomi- table character was his belief in God. He was not given to voluble expression of his feelings; he thought, not altogether wisely, as I think, that a gentleman should never talk of his religion or of his love-affairs. We have few glimpses of his inner life, except those which are furnished by his poems. His actions, however, speak louder than words. In his family, every Sunday morning, there was the reading of a chapter of the Bible and of prayers. He was, from his youth to his age, an invariable attendant upon the Sunday services of the church. In New England he worshiped with the Congregationalists, on Long Island with Presby- 20 RELIGIOUS HABITS terians, in the city of New York with Unitarians. But he never ventured to make a Christian profession until his later years. Mr. Curtis has told so beautifully the story of this epoch in his life, that I quote his words : " The poem called ' The Life that Is,' dated at Castella- mare, in May, 1858, commemorates the recovery of his wife from a serious illness. A little time before, in the month of April, after a long walk with his friend, the Reverend Mr. Waterston, of Boston, on the shore of the Bay of Naples, he spoke with softened heart of the new beauty that he felt in the old truth, and proposed to his friend to baptize him. With prayer and hymn and spiritual meditation, a little com- pany of seven, says Mr. Waterston, in a large upper room, as in the Christian story, partook of the Communion, and with his good gray head bowed down, Bryant was baptized." In the painted window which commemorates the ministry of Frederick W. Robertson in Brighton, Eng- land, there is a representation of Jesus at the age of twelve before the doctors in the temple, and with this inscription, " They were thinking about theology ; he about religion." Bryant dealt with religion. He was no professed theologian. Yet every man has some theology, whether he be conscious of it or not. Some conceptions of truth lie at the basis of his moral action, and the more thoughtful and logical he is, the more clear and articulate will these conceptions be. A mind so vigorous and honest as Bryant's could not help ex- pressing itself in forms of speech ; and though he was shy of utterance with regard to the deepest things of the soul, his poetic nature could not be satisfied with- out putting into verse that which to him was most fundamental. Many of his poems, indeed, seem writ- ten by way of gradual approach to a Christian con- BRYANT AND WORDSWORTH 2t fession, and to be glad and solemn avenues leading on- ward and upward to the holy of holies and to the dwelling-place of God. II I regard Bryant as a more truly Christian poet than even Wordsworth. Both were poets of nature. But Wordsworth came near to identifying God with nature: Bryant never confounded the two. Words- worth would never have found delight in mountain, field, and flood, if he had not recognized in them a Spirit which through them manifested itself to mortals. That Spirit, however, never seems to utter articulate sounds, or to take personal form. But to Bryant, God was never mere impersonal spirit. " It " and " which " were not applicable to Him. God was transcendent, even more than he was immanent. The finite was never merged in the infinite. Mortal awe never be- came pantheistic absorption. In all this we see the abiding influence of the poet's New England training, and the happy effect of those theological sermons to which he listened in his youth. What theology we find in Bryant's poetry must then be gathered from occasional utterances of the overflow- ing heart, rather than' from any set effort to declare dogmatic truth. When we do find such utterances, we may be sure that they will be clear indications of his inmost thought, and not diplomatic concessions to the spirit of the times. He believed, first of all, in a per- 22 CLEAR FAITH IN A PERSONAL GOD sonal God, and a God of love. This faith deHvered him from melancholy, and made him optimistic. In this respect he was a contrast to Matthew Arnold, to whom God was only '' the power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." One of the most astound- ing announcements in all literature is Matthew Arnold's assertion that this is the teaching of the Hebrew Scrip- tures. Without a personal God, the forward-looking spirit of Israel would be inexplicable. It is easy to see the truth of Button's remark that Matthew Arnold embodies in his verse " the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the languor of death." Bry- ant's verse has sweetness and gravity, but these are the sweetness and gravity of true life, derived from the divine source of life, and sustained thereby. The solemn joy of Bryant has its analogue, not in the noc- turne of Chopin, but in the largo of Handel. Our poet saw God in the beauty and grandeur of the world. Woods, waves, and sky were vocal with praise of their great Author. Bryant was not ignorant of science, but he wished to join science to faith. Some of his noblest poetry is the expression of spontaneous emotion in presence of God's sublime manifestations in nature. " A Forest Hymn " illustrates this character- istic of his verse : The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. GOD IN NATURE*S GRANDEUR 2^ "A Hymn of the Sea" gives us, in a similar man- ner, the poet's recognition of God's presence in " old ocean's gray and melancholy waste": The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have scooped His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy breath, That moved in the beginning o'er his face. Moves o'er it evermore. So too, there is a " Song of the Stars," in which the heavenly spheres are called The boundless visible smile of Him To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim. Over against God's creatorship and omnipresence, Bryant recognizes the sinfulness of humanity: When, from the genial cradle of our race, Went forth the tribes of men . . . . . . and there forgot The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that heard them not.' The world Is full of guilt and misery, . . Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, To tire thee of it.*' Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong. And heaven is listening.'^ There seems to be confession of his personal sin : " " The Ages." ' " Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood." ' " Earth." 24 SINFULNESS OF HUMANITY For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; And wra;th has left its scar — that fire of hell Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.^ " The West Wind " is a symbol of human incon- stancy and ingratitude : Ah! thou art like our wayward race; — When not a shade of pain or ill Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still. He regrets his forgetfulness of the " Yellow Violet " : So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried; I copied them — but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride. " The African Chief " depicts the cruelty of the sav- age: ® Chained in the market-place he stood, A man of giant frame. But his appeals for mercy are in vain : His heart was broken — crazed his brain: At once his eye grew wild; He struggled fiercely with his chain, Whispered, and wept, and smiled; Yet wore not long those fatal bands. And once, at shut of day, They drew him forth upon the sands, The foul hyena's prey. Human sinfulness touches the divine compassion in Bryant's verse. He sees in " The Fountain," that 8 «' The Future Life." THE DIVINE COMPASSION ^5 Springs '* from the red mould and slimy roots of earth," the symbol of God's grace : Thus doth God Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and bright. And in " The Ages " he asks : Has nature, in her calm, majestic march. Faltered with age at last? . . Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth In her fair page. . . . Eternal Love doth keep, In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. Will then the merciful One, who stamped our race With his own image, . . . . . leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed? Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high. In God's magnificent works his will shall scan — And love and peace shall make their paradise with man. The poet's sympathy with nature is connected with his Puritan belief in man's fall. The external world is beautiful, because unfallen. It shares with man the effects of sin; but, whenever we retreat from the regions which man's folly has despoiled, we may find something which reminds us of our lost paradise. From the wrath and injustice of man, the Puritans fled to the untrodden wilderness, and in its solitudes they D 2(> THE BEAUTIFUL UNFALLEN WORLD found a sanctuary. In the " Inscription for the En- trance to a Wood," we read : The primal curse Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt Her pale tormentor, misery. And so all things work together for good, even though for the present they may seem to contradict the divine beneficence. Bryant's " Hymn to Death " makes even that grim messenger to be the protector of God's creatures : Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been found On virtue's side; the wicked, but for thee. Had been too strong for the good; the great of earth Had crushed the weak forever. The " Hymn of the Waldenses " declares the justice of God: Hear, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock. . . Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand. . . Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth. But justice is mixed with love. He translates, from the Provengal of Bernard Rascas, the magnificent lines : All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. The forms of men shall be as they had never been; The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green; DIVINE JUSTICE AND LOVE 27 And the great globe itself, so the holy writings tell, With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell. Shall melt with fervent heat — they shall all pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. And from Boethius, on '' The Order of Nature " : Thou who wouldst read, with an undarkened eye. The laws by which the Thunderer bears sway, Look at the stars that keep, in yonder sky, Unbroken peace from Nature's earliest day. Love binds the parts together, gladly still They court the kind restraint, nor would be free; Unless Love held them subject to the Will That gave them being, they would cease to be. This love cares for the individual, as well as for the great whole over which it rules. The poet, in " The Crowded Street," cannot think any human soul for- gotten : Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them all, In his large care and boundless thought. These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to an appointed end. There was a vein of humor in Bryant, which seldom came to the surface, but which his associates sometimes discovered. He invites his pastor. Doctor Dewey, to come with Mrs. Dewey and visit him at his country- seat on Long Island : The season wears an aspect glum and glummer, The icy north wind, an unwelcome comer. Frighting from garden walks each pretty hurnmer. 28 A VEIN OF HUMOR Whose murmuring music lulled the noons of summer, Roars in the woods, with grummer voice and grummer. And thunders in the forest like a drummer. Dumb are the birdsi — they could not well be dumber; The winter-cold, life's pitiless benumber, Bursts water-pipes, and makes us call the plumber. Now, by the fireside, toils the patient thumber Of ancient books, and no less patient summer Of long accounts, while topers fill the rummer, The maiden thinks what furs will best become her. And on the stage-boards shouts the gibing mummer. ' Shut in by storms, the dull piano-strummer Murders old tunes. There's nothing wearisomer! This rhyming would have done credit to Browning or Lowell. But Bryant's humor appeared more often in his editorial work than in his poetry. A witty opponent said that his articles always began with a stale joke, and ended with a fresh lie — an accusation which only shows how greatly the journalism of the day needed reformation. No stanza of all Bryant's writing is better known or more often quoted than that from the poem en- titled " The Battle-field " : Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; Th' eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshipers. This verse has been criticized, as holding to some power of impersonal truth to conquer the world. In the light of our poet's other utterances, I must think this criticism unjust. Truth is personified only by poetic license. It has power only because it has God behind it, and because it is the very nature of God TRUTH AND FREEDOM NOT IMPERSONAL 2^ himself. And so I must interpret those noble lines in " My Autumn Walk," in which Bryant exclaims : Oh, for that better season, When the pride of the foe shall yield, And the hosts of God and Freedom March back from the well-won field! The hosts of truth and freedom are only the agents and instruments of God. This persistent theism characterizes his short and fanciful, as well as his longer and more serious pro- ductions. I know of no more beautiful celebration of divine Providence than that of Bryant's address " To a Waterfowl." It brings down God's care into the affairs of individual life : Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — The desert and illimitable air — Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned. At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere. Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. Though the dark night is near. 30 " TO A WATERFOWL " And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. These lines were written in the poet's youth, when the world was all before him where to choose, and when competence and success were far away. They are as perfect in diction as they are in faith. Matthew Arnold agreed with Hartley Coleridge in pronouncing " The Waterfowl " the finest short poem in the English language. I discern the same pure and trustful spirit in his poem entitled " Blessed are they that Mourn." The Providence that gives us^days of gladness does not forget us in our days of sorrow : Oh, deem not they are blest alone Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep; The Power who pities man, hath shown A blessing for the eyes that weep. The light of smiles shall fill again The lids that overflow with tears; And weary hours of woe and pain Are promises of happier years. There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night: And grief may bide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light. BRYANT A CHRISTIAN 3 1 And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier, Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to thy arms again. Nor let the good man's trust depart. Though life its common gifts deny, — Though with a pierced and bleeding heart, And spurned of men, he goes to die. For God hath marked each sorrowing day, And numbered every secret tear. And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay For all his children suffer here. William Cullen Bryant was a Christian. He de- clared his entire reliance on Christ for salvation. I do not know that his faith would have answered to the ordinary dogmatic standards, but it was certainly strong enough to lead him to confession and to bap- tism. He knew his own weakness and insufficiency, and he trusted in what God had done for him, and what God would do for him, in Jesus Christ. In his Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, he showed How vain. Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands. Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain The smile of Heaven. It is not generally known that he wrote hymns for public worship, for not all of these are included in most editions of his works. But Symington, in his biography, quotes for us two stanzas of a hymn founded on the saying of Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the marriage in Cana of Galilee : 32 BRYANT A HYMN-WRITER Whate'er he bids observe and do; Such be the law that we obey, And greater wonders men shall view Than that of Cana's bridal day. The flinty heart with love shall beat, The chains shall fall from passion's slave, The proud shall sit at Jesus' feet And learn the truths that bless and save. His published works do, however, furnish us with another hymn which bears the title, " Receive Thy Sight," and is a metrical version of the Gospel story : When the blind suppliant in the way. By friendly hands to Jesus led. Prayed to behold the light of day, " Receive thy sight," the Saviour said. At once he saw the pleasant rays That lit the glorious firmament; And, with firm step and words of praise, He followed where the Master went. Look down in pity. Lord, we pray, On eyes oppressed with moral night, And touch the darkened lids and say The gracious words, " Receive thy sight." Then, in clear daylight, shall we see Where walked the sinless Son of God; And, aided by new strength from Thee, Press onward in the path He trod. There is a hymn to celebrate Christ's nativity : As shadows cast by cloud and sun Flit o'er the summer grass, So, in thy sight, Almighty One! Earth's generations pass. THE NATIVITY AND MISSIONS 33 And while the years, an endless host, Come pressing swiftly on, The brightest names that earth can boast Just glisten, and are gone. Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed A lustre pure and sweet; And still it leads, as once it led, To the Messiah's feet. O Father, may that holy Star Grow every year more bright, And send its glorious beam afar To fill the world with light. And a prayer for the regions of our own land that need the gospel : Look from the sphere of endless day, Oh, God of mercy and of might! In pity look on those who stray. Benighted, in this land of light. In peopled vale, in lonely glen. In crowded mart, by stream or sea, How many of the sons of men Hear not the message sent from thee. Send forth thy heralds, Lord, to call The thoughtless young, the hardened old, A wandering flock, and bring them all To the Good Shepherd's peaceful fold. Send them thy mighty word to speak Till faith shall dawn, and doubt depart, — To awe the bold, to stay the weak, And bind and heal the broken heart. Then all these wastes, a dreary scene On which, with sorrowing eyes, we gaze. Shall grow with living waters green. And lift to heaven the voice of praise. 34. A PRAYER FOR THE INTEMPERATE There is a hymn of pity for the intemperate, and a prayer for their rescue : When doomed to death, the Apostle lay At night, in Herod's dungeon-cell, A light shone round him like the day. And from his limbs the fetters fell. A messenger from God was there, To break his chain and bid him rise, And lo! the Saint, as free as air, Walked forth beneath the open skies. Chains yet more strong and cruel bind The victims of that deadly thirst Which drowns the soul, and from the mind Blots the bright image stamped at first. Oh, God of Love and Mercy, deign To look on those, with pitying eye. Who struggle with that fatal chain, And send them succor from on high! Send down, in its resistless might, Thy gracious Spirit, we implore, And lead the captive forth to light, A rescued soul, a slave no more. And even the dedication of a church draws out his prayerful sympathy and poetic feehng: O thou whose own vast temple stands. Built over earth and sea. Accept the walls that human hands Have raised to worship thee. Lord, from thine inmost glory send, Within these walls to bide, The peace that dwelleth without end Serenely by thy side. MOST SIGNIFICANT RELIGIOUS POEM 35 May erring minds, that worship here, Be taught the better way; And they who mourn, and they who fear, Be strengthened as they pray. May faith grow firm, and love grow warm, And pure devotion rise, While, round these hallowed walls, the storm Of earth-born passion dies. I have yet to quote the most significant of Bryant's distinctly religious poems. It is entitled ** He hath put all things under his feet," and this hymn declares the world-wide supremacy of Christ : O North, with all thy vales of green! O South, with all thy palms! From peopled towns and fields between Uplift the voice of psalms; Raise, ancient East! the anthem high, And let the youthful West reply. Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears God's well-beloved Son; He brings a train of brighter years: His kingdom is begun; He comes a guilty world to bless With mercy, truth, and righteousness. Oh, Father! haste the promised hour, When, at His feet, shall lie All rule, authority, and power Beneath the ample sky; When He shall reign from pole to pole. The Lord of every human soul; When all shall heed the words He said Amid their daily cares, And, by the loving life He led, Shall seek to pattern theirs; And He, who conquered Death, shall win The nobler conquest over Sin. 36 THE CROSS RARELY IN BRYANt's VERSES This hymn does not declare Christ's absolute deity, nor does it indicate the poet's knowledge of that spiritual union with Christ which is the source of great- est joy to the believer. Joy has its root in sacrifice — Christ's sacrifice for us and our sacrifice to him. We seldom read of the Cross, in Bryant's poetry. Yet faith in the Cross is not wholly absent. In his poem, " Waiting by the Gate," he seems to make all final joy depend upon Christ's death : And some approach the threshold whose looks are blank with fear, And some whose temples brighten with joy in drawing near, As if they saw dear faces, and caught the gracious eye Of Him, the Sinless Teacher, who came for us to die. The infrequency of our poet's reference to Calvary, and to the Christian's union with the crucified One, is the reason why his work is so somber, so redolent of duty, so given to external nature. If he had pene- trated more deeply into " the mystery of the gospel," which is " Christ in us," he would have had more of the Christian's " hope of glory." Yet Mr. John Bige- low writes of him : " Though habitually an attendant upon the ministrations of the Unitarian clergy when they were accessible, no one ever recognized more completely or more devoutly the divinity of Christ." Even here, " divinity " may not mean the same as " deity." But let us be thankful for what we find. His theism and his recognition of God's providence, his faith in God's love and revelation, have for their corollary an unwavering belief in immortality. This appears conspicuously in his love-songs, which were, almost without exception, addressed to his wife, with BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 37 whom he spent forty-five years of married life. Before their marriage he addressed her as " fairest of the rural maids," and under the pseudonym of " Gene- vieve " he made her the subject of one of his lightest and sweetest poems: Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear, The hunter of the West must go In depth of woods to seek the deer. His rifle on his shoulder placed, His stores of death arranged with skill, His moccasins and snow-shoes laced — Why lingers he beside the hill? Far, in the dim and doubtful light, Where woody slopes a valley leave, He sees what none but lover might. The dwelling of his Genevieve. And oft he turns his truant eye, And pauses oft, and lingers near; But when he marks the reddening sky, He bounds away to hunt the deer. When in 1858 Mrs. Bryant had recovered from a long and painful illness, the poet welcomed his wife in the verses which he named " The Life that Is," and of these I quote the first and the last : Thou, who so long hast pressed the couch of pain, Oh welcome, welcome back to life's free breath — To life's free breath and day's sweet light again, From the chill shadows of the gate of death! Now may we keep thee from the balmy air And radiant walks of heaven a little space, Where He, who went before thee to prepare For His meek followers, shall assign thy place. 3S But in 1866 death finally took his wife from him. It was an irremediable loss, for his reserved nature had found in her his only intimate friend. His poem, " A Lifetime," begins with a treatment of grief in the third person, but it ends most pathetically by attribut- ing all the sorrow to himself. It is the last poem he composed, and it summarizes his own life: And well I know that a brightness From his life has passed away, And a smile from the green earth's beauty, And a glory from the day. But I behold, above him, In the far blue depths of air, Dim battlements shining faintly. And a throng of faces there; See over crystal barrier The airy figures bend, Like those who are watching and waiting The coming of a friend. And one there is among them, With a star upon her brow. In her life a lovely woman, A sinless seraph now. I know the sweet calm features; The peerless smile I know; And I stretch my arms with transport From where I stand below. And the quick tears drown my eyelids, But the airy figures fade, And the shining battlements darken And blend with the evening shade. I am gazing into the twilight Where the dim-seen meadows lie, And the wind of night is swaying The trees with a heavy sigh. A SORROW NOT WITHOUT HOPE 39 He did not sorrow as those without hope, for he believed in Him who has brought life and immortality to light in his glorious gospel. He cannot think that the separation caused by death is lasting. In his poem, " The Future Life," he writes : How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps The disembodied spirits of the dead, When all of thee that time could wither sleeps And perishes among the dust we tread? For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain, If there I meet thy gentle presence not; Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. The love that lived through all the stormy past. And meekly with my harsher nature bore, And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last. Shall it expire with life, and be no more? Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home. The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — The wisdom which is love — till I become Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? Indeed, he trusts that even now the separation is not complete : May we not think that near us thou dost stand With loving ministrations? for we know Thy heart was never happy when thy hand Was forced its tasks of mercy to forego. May'st thou not prompt with every coming day The generous aim and act, and gently win Our restless, wandering thoughts, to turn away From every treacherous path that ends in sin? His poem, " The Death of the Flowers," has a moving pathos, from the fact that it commemorates the 40 " THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS '* loss of a beloved sister who died in her twenty-second year : The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. . . Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood, In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas, they all are in their graves! The gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:_ In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. He calls one of his poems " The Past." He sees all of earth's treasures sooner or later swallowed up by time. But, personifying the past, he writes : Thine for a space are they — Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; Thy gates shall yet give way, Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, Shall then come forth to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime. i They have not perished — no! Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, Smiles, radiant long ago, And features, the great soul's apparent seat. PiLlAL Pmrv 41 All shall come back; each tie Of pure affection shall be knit again; Alone shall Evil die, And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. And then shall I behold Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, And her, who, still and cold. Fills the next grave — the beautiful and young. One of Bryant's noblest traits was his filial piety, the love for parents and for kindred, which many waters could not quench nor the floods drown, and which the lapse of time and the separation of death only intensified and exalted. He cannot view the glory of " June," without thinking of the friends who will visit his tomb : These to their softened hearts should bear The thought of what has been, And speak of one who cannot share The gladness of the scene; Whose part, in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills, Is that his grave is green. Rest, therefore, thou Whose early guidance trained my infant steps — Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep Of death is over, and a happier life Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust.® In " The Indian Girl's Lament," the bereaved maiden comforts her soul with the thought that her lover will yet be hers : « " Hymn to Death." E 42 THE FRINGED GENTIAN " And thou dost wait and watch to meet My spirit sent to join the blessed, And, wondering what detains my feet From that bright land of rest, Dost seem, in every sound, to hear The rustling of my footsteps near. " The Fringed Gentian " suggests to Bryant an old man's departure from this earthly life : Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. " The Old Man's Funeral " is a poem in which Bryant might seem to be describing his own end : Why weep ye then for him, who, having won The bound of man's appointed years, at last, Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done. Serenely to his final rest has passed; While the soft memory of his virtues, yet, Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set. His youth was innocent; his riper age Marked with some act of goodness every day; And watched by eyes that loved him, calm and sage, Faded his late declining years away. Meekly he gave his being up. and went To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent. IMMORTAL HOPE 43 " The Journey of Life " ends with a stanza of im- mortal hope : And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on, Watching the stars that roll the hours away, Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, And, like another life, the glorious day Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height, With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light. There is a " Paradise of Tears " : There every heart rejoins its kindred heart; There, in a long embrace that none may part, Fulfilment meets desire, and that fair shore Beholds its dwellers happy evermore. " And I," he said, " shall sleep ere long; These fading gleams will soon be gone; Shall sleep to rise refreshed and strong In the bright day that yet will dawn." ^" " The Flood of Years " will bring at length the con- summation of all our hopes : Old sorrows are forgotten now, Or but remembered to make sweet the hour That overpays them; wounded hearts that bled Or broke are healed forever. In the room Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw The heart, and never shall a tender tie Be broken; in whose reign the eternal Change, That waits on growth and action, shall proceed With everlasting Concord hand in hand. It must be acknowledged that this earliest of our American poets had his limitations. He had not the 10 " The Two Travellers." 44 fikYANT^S LIMITATIONS breadth of the great masters of his art. Science and philosophy did not interest him, as they interested Tennyson. The complexity of human nature is not depicted in his verse, as we find it depicted by Brown- ing. A certain narrowness of range characterizes all his work. He is descriptive and meditative, but never lyric or dramatic. There is an ever-recurring re- membrance of death and the grave. Critics have de- bated the question how a youth of seventeen could have chosen " Thanatopsis " for a subject. It is even more remarkable that the poetical writing of after years still dealt with this as its central theme. Dr. William C. Gannett, with his minute knowledge of literary his- tory, has suggested an explanation both plausible and interesting. The first five years of Bryant's life were spent in a log house whose windows looked across the road upon the stone-walled village burying-ground. The child's earliest impressions of the world were con- nected with man's mortality. Puritan training traced this mortality to an original apostasy of the race from God, and to the penalty of a broken law. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, and Bryant never outgrew the somberness of this early view of the uni- verse. Jean Paul has said that the melancholy of youth is the veil which a kind Providence throws over the faces of those who are to climb the dazzling Alpine heights of success and fame. But it surely belongs to manhood to look with unveiled face upon the realities of existence. The meagemess of Bryant's schooling prevented his emancipation. If he had gone to Yale, as he had hoped to do, association with his equals and SOMBERNESS OF BRYANT S VERSE 45 his superiors would have drawn him out of himself, and would have made him more a man of the world. He was naturally shy and seclusive. As an editor, he dis- liked to meet socially those whom he might be called upon to criticize. His impartiality was sometimes like that of the reviewer whose freedom from prejudice is due to the fact that he has not read the book he criticizes. Greater variety of association would have added to the number of the themes which kindled in him the poetic fire. But I must add to all this my belief that Bryant's mournfulness was the result of an imperfect under- standing of the Christian revelation. He was a Puri- tan poet, and Puritanism too often lacked the recogni- tion of a present Christ. In " The Pilgrim's Progress," Christian expects to see his Saviour when he reaches the heavenly city, but he is destitute of his companion- ship on the journey thither. Though strong faith in a future life made Bryant serene, his serenity was too much like resignation — he needed more of joy in the present. Such joy would have enlarged the area of his poetic achievement, while at the same time it tempered the critical spirit of the editor. But one thing must always be said of our poet : he was sincere and pure. There is no mawkish senti- mentality in his verse, no pandering to the lower in- stincts of humanity, no expression of merely transient and conventional religious feeling. Lord Byron could write hymns in histrionic fashion, as a brilliant imper- sonator; of such hypocrisy Bryant was incapable. His limitations, therefore, are as instructive as his gifts. Like Wordsworth, he is a poet of nature. But, while V 46 " LIBRARY OF POETRY AND SONG " Wordsworth sees in nature the immanence of God, Bryant sees in nature God's transcAidence rather, and so is the greater Puritan of the two. His reverence for God's work in nature is greater than his reverence for God's work in man. But he has certainly taught us that poetry is no mere vers de sociqpe) but rather an embodiment of the deepest thoughts >©f the human soul : '* He let no empty gust Of passion find an utterance in his lay, A blast that whirls the dust Along the crowded street and dies away; But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, Like currents journeying through the windless deep.^ In " The Library of Poetry and Song," the great octavo volume which he edited, and which contains fifteen hundred selections from four hundred authors, Bryant prefaced the collection with an Introduction of his own. No better summary of the history of English poetry has ever been written, and no more judicious choice of poems has ever been made. In his Introduc- tion, the poet gives us in sober prose his theory of verse. He tells us that " only poems of moderate length, or else portions of the greater works, . . pro- duce the effect upon the mind and heart which make the charm of this kind of writing." He measured his own productions by this rule. Most of his poems are short, and the shortest are in general the best. Yet in his seventy-second year he undertook the Herculean task of putting Homer's Iliad into English verse, " " The Poet," paraphrased by John Bigelow, TRANSLATOR OF HOMER 47 and the success of this venture encouraged him to con- tinue his work until he had accomphshed the transla- tion of the Odyssey. He gave five years to this task, aiid finished it in his seventy-seventh year. We cannot understand it, unless we remember that it was his means of occupation and diversion after the death of his wife. It was not the toil and strain of original composition. Homer furnished the thought; Bryant had only to give the thought new expression. Homer led him out again into the open air. There was a like- ness between Bryant's view of nature and that of the first great classic poet. The stateliness and resonance of Homer's verse appealed to him. Embodying that verse in English seemed to him a service to literature. And critics have agreed that no English version of the Iliad or of the Odyssey, in metrical form, surpasses it in value. To my mind, this five years' work of the old man eloquent, accomplished in the darkness of bereavement, and with the single light of an undying hope, shows a strength of will which even death was powerless to subdue. One of our best American critics, Professor William C. Wilkinson, has compared Bryant's lack of tropical fervor to the statuesque repose of Greek art, and to the calm dignity of George Washington. There is emotion in his verse, but it is emotion that warms, while it does not burn. Passion is controlled, rather than deficient. The expression is less, not greater, than the feeling. There is no violence of diction. We have had but one Washington, and but one Bryant. It is well that our line of poets begins with one so high, severe, and pure. This judgment of Professor Wil- 48 SUMMARY OF BRYANT's CHARACTER kinson I would adopt for my own, and would add the verses in which he has described the poet : Gentle in spirit as in mien severe; Calm but not cold; strength, majesty, and grace. Measure, and balance, and repose, in clear Lines, like a sculptor's, graven on the face Such image lovers of his verse have learned To limn their poet, peaceful after strife; A statue, as of life to marble turned? Nay, as of marble turned to breathing life. I have taken interest in the story of Bryant's life and work, in large part because the religious and theological aspects of it have seemed to me to have been hitherto neglected. Our earliest American poet furnished no object-lesson of unbelief to his successors. He did not compass the whole range of Christian truth, any more than he compassed the whole range of poetic inspi- ration; but he taught his countrymen, and he taught the world, of God in nature and in history, of Christ as the Guide and Saviour of mankind, and of an immortal life that opens for us all beyond this present transi- tory scene. His teaching is all the more impressive and convincing because he does not speak to us as a preacher, but as a man ; and because he utters only what he has seen and felt. He shows himself to be the true poet, by telling us the inner meaning of the universe, and by bringing us Authentic tidings of invisible things. II RALPH WALDO EMERSON RALPH WALDO EMERSON Nine years after Bryant, Emerson was born. Our second American poet began his life in 1803, half-way between the war of the Revolution and the war with England in 1812. The embattled farmers had won their independence, and they were ready for another fray. It was a time of sturdy self-assertion. The early Calvinism had been toned down by a discovery of the dignity of man. Emerson was the heir of eight successive generations of Puritan divines who had been gradually sloughing off their Puritanism and standing for what they regarded as natural freedom of thought. Straitened circumstances had trained him, as they trained Bryant, to plain living; his Cambridge sur- roundings were more favorable than were Bryant's to high thinking. His father was pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Boston, a pleasing preacher of somewhat latitudinarian doctrine and no stickler for the mere forms of religion. When this father died, he left a family of six children, all of them under ten years of .age, of whom Ralph was the fourth son. The mother, with five hundred dollars a year from the church, kept boarders in order to support and educate her children. They sometimes lacked food, but then 51 52 INTELLECTUAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE their aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a genius but a strict Calvinist, stayed their stomachs by telling them stories of heroic endurance. Ralph Waldo lived in an atmosphere of letters. He is described as a spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, angelic and remarkable. He had a lofty carriage of the head, which some attributed to pride, but which was wholly unconscious. There was no education of the playground or the nursery. Aunt Mary frowned upon mirth or frivolity in the children. The boy lived a life apart, and never learned to mingle freely with his fellows. School began when he was only three years old. He does not appear to have been a pre- cocious scholar. In his college course at Harvard, he was not distinguished in his class, except for a certain poetical gift. He supported himself through college by serving as errand boy to the president, and by waiting on the table at commons. But all this nour- ished in him a habitual self-reliance, and the child was father of the man, for in his diary he wrote even then, " I purpose from this day to utter no essay or poem that is not absolutely and peculiarly my own." Emerson's address on " The American Scholar," delivered at Cambridge in 1837, has been called "the intellectual Declaration of Independence of the United States." But that address was antedated by Bryant's dictum, eighteen years before, that American poets should seek to achieve original expression and should no longer imitate. It is easy to see that freedom was in the air, and that neither one of these writers had a monopoly of originality. Colonial subjection, even in literature, had had its day, and a new age was opening. a _w^ ^^»^^^^,, ii THE SPHINX S3 Both Bryant and Emerson felt the stirrings of a new Hfe, the former in his vision of the New England landscape, the latter in his apprehension of the spirit which moved within it. Of the two, however, we must give the palm for simplicity and intelligibility to Bry- ant, though we acknowledge the superiority of Emer- son in breadth and insight. I speak of their poetry, and I would liken Bryant's to the clear radiance of a summer morning, while Emerson's is like the fitful flashes which light up a summer evening cloud. It is interesting to note that Emerson puts his poem of " The Sphinx " in the forefront of his published verses. This somewhat obscure and unmetrical pro- duction has significance as indicating his own estimate of his genius, and as boldly challenging the animad- versions of his critics. Emerson is himself .a sphinx. His writings propound a riddle, which is still un- solved. Is he philosopher, or poet, or prophet? Mat- thew Arnold denies that he is any one of these, and declares rather ambiguously that he is simply " the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." Emerson is doubtful about himself, for at one time he says, " It has been decided that I cannot write poetry " ; at other times he writes : " I am half a bard, not a poet, but a lover of poetry and poets." " I am born a poet — of a lower class, no doubt, yet a poet." " I am not a great poet, but whatever is of me is a poet." " My singing, be sure, is very husky, and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet, in the sense of a preserver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter, and specially of the cor- respondences between these and those." But James S4 A POETICAL PHILOSOPHER Russell Lowell said of Emerson's verses, " They are pure pr ; no, they are not even prose." Perhaps it is nearest the truth to say that he was a poetical philosopher. But even here we must qualify our statement. If organization of material is neces- sary to philosophy, Emerson was no philosopher, for he had no system. He speaks of his own " formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of bouldersv Here I sit, and read and write, with very little system, and as far as regards composition with the most fragmentary result, paragraphs incompre- hensible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." What philosophy he has is infinitely eclectic also — a medley of all philosophies — fate and free will, good and evil, God and man, being inextricably combined and confounded. I am more inclined to call him a prophet than to call him either a poet or a philosopher. The prophet utters some great and vital truth, but he mixes with this so much of error that he becomes too often a false prophet. What he says of Alcott is even more true of himself : " Gold ore is so combined with other elements that no chemistry is able to sepa- rate it without great loss." Yet there is a leading and dominant thought in all his work, and we must grasp this, if we would under- stand either his poetry or his prose. It is the thought of the spiritual meaning of the world. Emerson, be- yond all others, is the poet of transcendentalism, but of transcendentalism under bonds to a naturalistic phi- losophy. To explain and to justify this estimate will require some reflection, and I can at present only indi- cate the drift of my discussion. Since his verse is Man explained by nature SS exceedingly condensed and enigmatical, we can best understand it if we first study the larger and plainer expression of his thought in his essays. Let it suffice now to point out the fact that, as Emerson prefaced with " The Sphinx " the collection of his poems, so he made his address on " Nature " introduce the edition of his prose. Where one begins in philosophy, there he is likely to end. [li we begin with the seemingly \ fixed successions of the outward world, we shall be/ apt to apply the category of necessity to man, and! shall deny his freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt ;\ whereas, if we begin with man's conscience and free will, we have the only possible key to the mysteries of nature, for nature's laws are only the regularities of freedom?] Emerson makes the fundamental mistake of interpreting man by nature, instead of interpreting nature by man. EngHsh Unitarians were materalists, and they thought of nature as consisting of dead lumps and as subject to unvarying law. Emerson did not wholly escape from their influence. " If you wish to understand intellectual philosophy," he says, " do not turn inward by introversion, but study natural science. Every time you discover a law of things, you discover a principle of mind." He adds, indeed, that if you wish to know nature, you must study mind. But, for all that, he begins with nature, and finds there his key to unlock the secrets of the soul. Cabot, in his admirable biography of Emerson, seeks to mitigate any unfavorable judgment which this fact may lead us to form, by explaining what our author means by nature. In itself, he would say, nature is Wind and opaque, is equivalent to fate, is the bondage 56 DEE^fict IN Emerson's xHiNiCiNci of the spirit. Man, as a part of nature, is the victim of environment. But he is not simply a part of nature ; he is not mere effect; he potentially shares the cause. On one side of his being he is open to the divine Mind. He may detach himself from nature, he may be a finite creator. To thought and inspired will, nature is transparent and plastic. When we yield to the remedial force of spirit, evil is no more seen. The prerogative of man is to feel this infinity within him, and to make himself its willing instrument. Evil without only reflects his unbelief. There is freedom to resist the evil and to appropriate the powers of good. This is^ Cabot's ingenious interpretation of Emerson's doctrine. Emerson himself, in our opinion, would have smiled at it, as philosophically defining what he meant to leave undefined. He was no Ixion, to turn his cloud into a Juno. His conception of nature was not that of some- thing external and capable of management by will. Nature, he would say, is itself will; but will without freedom, a necessitated and deterministic will ; and the only essential difference between Emerson and Scho- penhauer was that, in Emerson's view, this will makes for good, to Schopenhauer, for evil. While thus indicating the fatal defect in Emer- son's thinking, we may, with all the more frankness, credit him with whatever is good in transcendentalism. That much abused and little understood word denoted a method of thought compounded of English idealism, German intuitionalism, and Oriental immanence. In England, Locke had declared that intellect has no ideas which are not ultimately derived from the senses. Leibnitz, however, had replied that intellect itself can- EMERSON^S TRANSCENMNTALISM 57 not be so derived; and Berkeley had insisted that ma- terial things cannot be proved to exist apart from mind. It was easy for Hume to infer that we know mental substance within, as little as we know material sub- stance without. Emerson did not conclude, with Hume, that we need no cause for our ideas, in the world, in the soul, or in God. He rather held with Berkeley, that, while things do not exist independently of consciousness, they do exist independently of our consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a correct philosophy takes the place of a mindless ex- ternal world as the cause of our ideas. Emerson's transcendentalism regarded the universe as spiritual rather than material, and in this he rendered a great service to contemporary thought. English theology had hardened into Deism — God was far away, an absentee God, sitting on the outside of the universe ever since he made it. New England had felt the influence. The old Calvinism was superseded by Arminianism, and American independence recog- nized the kingdom of man rather than the kingdom of God. It was well that Emerson struck the note of idealism. It summoned his generation to a new recog- nition of the spiritual nature of the world. If his pro- test against materialism had only been accompanied by a deeper ethical study of man, he might have led his followers into theism rather than into pantheism. Nor- ton calls Emerson's essay on Nature " an outburst of Romanticism on Puritan ground," and Romanticism was pantheistic rather than theistic. German intuitionalism was the second factor in Emerson's transcendentalism. Kant, in his investiga- 58 PERVERSION OF INTUITIONALISM tion of our processes of knowing, had shown the ele- ment of truth in the discarded doctrine of innate ideas, and had declared that the mind employs, in all its exer- cises, assumptions of tiiiie and ^2ace, s ubstance and cjusfi, desigii_and right, assumptions which never can be proved, because they are the basis of all proof. The categories are intuitional. We have an original and unverifiable knowledge of principles which lie at the basis of all thinking; and, though these principles are undemonstrable, our mental and moral nature is so constructed that we cannot avoid acting upon them. Here, and not in mere argument, lies our reason for belief in God. Emerson seized upon the element of truth in intuitionalism, but he sadly exaggerated and perverted it. Instead of accepting it as the regulative principle of all knowledge, he transformed it into a positive source of knowledge. Instead of learning from it how we are to learn, he learned from it what we are to learn. The inner light took the place of all the outer lights which God has given us. Man became a law to himself; ceased to recognize authority of any sort ; had no need of revelation from without. " We must not seek. advantages from another," says Emer- son ; " the fountain of all good is in ourselves. . . Each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. . . Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history-books." It is as if, in virtue of our eyesight, we should deny that we need external light whereby to see, or require any special objects to be lit up by that light, or are dependent upon the sun from which that light shines upon us. AUTHORITY OF HISTORIC REVELATIONS 59 This is the proper place to state our chief objection to Emerson's intuitionahsm, and to point out the need of that external authority which he rejected. God does not leave the child or the race to build up all its knowledge anew. As acquired truth finds legiti- mate forms of expression, it becomes authority for others than those who originally perceived it. All advance in human intelligence depends upon our rev- erent reception of the treasure which comes to us from the past. God requires us to trust his historic revelations, and to pay respect to the teaching of par- ents, discoverers, and experts, in education, business, science, and art. Religious truth is particularly subject to this law. We are not the first who have come in contact with God, since all men live, move, and have their being in him. God's revelations to the individual always build upon his teachings of the race. To despise authority, and to set ourselves up as primary recipients of revelation, is to pour contempt upon the whole proc- ess of evolution and the organic connection of the generations ; is, in short, to substitute individualism for racial unity. Individual experiences of God and of his grace have been recorded in Scripture, and the Scriptures accordingly are able to make us wise unto salvation. They specially and predominantly testify to Christ as a divine and atoning Saviour, and show how his teaching and work have made God accessible to men. God bids us bow to Christ, as his representa- tive, and as our supreme authority; and the witness of God is this, that God gave to us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son. God is light. But light diffused cannot be seen ; we 60 INTUITIONS NEED A CORRECTIVE see by it, but we do not see it ; it will not be recognized, unless it is concentrated; hence the sun, the physical luminary. So no man has seen God at any time — " whom no man has seen or can see " ; the invisible God needs to be manifested; hence the Son, the spir- itual luminary. Finite beings will always need more than '' the light that lighteth every man," need more than the diffused light of nature and conscience and intuition. Even in heaven that diffused light is not enough, for " though they need no candle nor light of the sun " because " the Lord God gives them light," it is expressly declared that " the lamp thereof is the Lamb " — in Christ alone is God's light concentrated and made visible to his creatures. Emerson's intuitions are not a trustworthy expres- sion of the infinite Reason. They are colored by finite- ness and sin. They lack the sense of the ideal. They unduly magnify the physical. In Brahminism, such intuitions glorify the lustful and the base. They turn might into right, and the self into God. Intuition needs the corrective of special revelation, and that revelation is given to us in Christ. Authority is, therefore, neither purely objective on the one hand, nor purely subjective on the other, for man is neither permanently infantile, nor fully mature; he is not wholly dependent upon human teachers, nor does he discover all truth himself. Christianity is, first, objective manifestation of truth, in the Sun and the Son ; then, secondly, subjective ap- propriation of truth, by the cooperation of spirit with Spirit; that is, of the human spirit with the divine Spirit. What is the place of the Bible in this revelation ? I PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN REVELATION 6 1 reply that the Bible is a telescope between man and God; it is the rending of a veil. We do not worship the telescope, on the one hand, nor, on the other hand, do we refuse to use it. It is an authority in astron- omy. Similarly, the written records of Christianity are our authority in religion. Give them up, trust your intuitions, and you may have Christian Science, or pantheism, or Romanist worship of Virgin and saints, and a hierarchy that destroys human freedom. Give up historic Christianity, and you put an end to Christian life and experience. Faith in the authority of Scripture is perfectly consistent with free inquiry as to the method of its evolution and inspiration. No criticism, higher or lower, can destroy its life. The total teaching of the Bible is ascertainable on all points that are essential to salvation ; for salvation is de- pendent not on the book, but on the person of Jesus Christ, who is revealed in the book. Union with Christ is the one essential, and belief in Scripture and the church is incidental. The Bible record of historic facts and of past experience is authority for us, because it makes known Christ and brings us in contact with him. The Bible does not take the place of Christ; its au- thority is not original ; it simply reveals Christ, who is the authority. All this throws light upon one of the great heresies of modern theology, this namely, that the Bible is only a record of human experiences, and not a revelation from God. What is to prevent God from revealing himself through those very experiences? Why may he not so utter his messages that they shall be actual voices from on high ? Grant that the revelation is pro- 62 ORIENTAL IMMANENCE gressive. Still may we believe in the unity, sufficiency, and authority of Scripture. Oriental immanence contributed a final element to Emerson's transcendentalism. The doctrine of the Over-Soul, in which every man's particular being is contained, is indeed the central principle of his think- ing. He regarded God as immanent, not only in na- ture, but also in man ; one Mind is common to all men ; and each man is a new incarnation. " I am part and parcel of God," he said. " The simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God." Both nature and humanity were in this way so glorified that strange inferences were sometimes drawn. He called mandarin oranges " Christianity in apples." A story is current that, at the opera, Emerson and Margaret Fuller were gazing at the ballet, when Miss Fuller re- marked, " Ralph, this is poetry ! " and he replied, " Margaret, this is religion ! " Doctor Harrison, of Kenyon College, has written a valuable book on " The Teachers of Emerson," in which he aims to disclose the sources of Emerson's doc- trine. He traces it back ultimately to Plato, though he grants that Neoplatonism had greater influence upon Emerson than had Plato himself. Plato certainly taught the ineffable unity of all being, by reason of its participation in the divine ideas. But this was not the peculiar doctrine of Emerson. He taught the imma- nence of an active God in humanity and the mystical union of humanity with Deity. He found this doctrine in the Neoplatonic speculations of the Alexandrian PIo- tinus, and the ecstatic utterances of the Hindu Vedas fell in with his thought He was not a profound stu- Emerson's eclecticism 63 dent of the mystics, any more than he was a profound student of the philosophers. He was no great scholar, and it was mainly translations that he read. But he had a way of appropriating whatever suited his pur- pose ; like Moliere he could say, '^ Je prends mon bkn ou je le trouve." Tauler, Fox, Swedenborg, furnished him with material, and he did not disdain to borrow from the Persian Saadi and Omar Khayyam. He made his own whatever in all literature asserted the presence and energy of God in every particle of the universe and in every human soul. If Spinoza could be called " a God-intoxicated man," Emerson was even better entitled to this designation ; for while Spinoza's God was only Nature, Emerson's God still retained some of the attributes of personality derived from Calvinism. The survival of elements belonging to Emerson's ancestral religion is indeed all that rescues his work from gross idolatry of nature. In so many words, he denied God's personality : " I say that I cannot find, when I explore my own conscious- ness, any truth in saying that God is a person, but the reverse. . . To represent him as an individual is to shut him out of my consciousness." But let us be just to Emerson. By personality, he may mean nothing but limitation to an individual. He also says : " I deny personality to God, because it is too little, not too much. Life, personal life, is faint and cold, to the energy of God. For Reason and Love and Beauty, or that which is all these — it is the life of life, the reason of reason, the love of love." Emerson should have remembered that it is finiteness, and not personality, that implies limitation: an infinite personality may be 64 SELF-DEIFICATION unlimited. And, as will in man is the highest and most inclusive attribute of his personality, we cannot deny personality to God without depriving him of will. Such denial makes him identical with nature and not its informing Spirit ; conterminous with nature and not above it. And since all we know of nature we know from the processes of our own minds, God is identified with those processes; we have no knowledge of him as existing apart from ourselves ; we find God only within our own souls; he is immanent but not transcendent. Thus transcendentalism contradicts itself and becomes self-deification. It is the precise opposite of the Scrip- ture representation, which speaks of God as not only " in all," and " through all," but also " above all." The God whom the Bible recognizes as immanent is a God of will, as well as of power; a God of wisdom and love and holiness ; a God who can come down in special ways to his creatures; and who can reveal himself in Christ, as their Saviour from the penalty and the power of sin. The God of Emerson, on the other hand, is a mere abstraction, a mere idealization of nature. He tells us that Conscious Law is King of kings.^ But he might also have called Law i/wconscious, for he denied to it personality; and Doctor Ware said well, in criticism of Emerson's doctrine : " Law, truth, love, are no Deity. There must be some Being, to exercise these attributes. There is a personal God, or there is no God." ^ " Woodnotes," II, THE IMMANENCE OF CHRIST 6$ We can appreciate the gravity of this error, if we contrast Emerson's view of nature with that of another Puritan, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards escapes from Emerson's moral indifference, and from his bHndness to personality in God, by recognizing in nature the presence and working of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and in whom all things consist. Edwards writes : " He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the correspond- ing excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of Gpd. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace, and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beau- teous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and, in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder-clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holi- ness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and 66 THE TRUE TRANSCENDENTALISM Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among the trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so un- couth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul." This is the true transcendentalism, which sees in all nature Christ's manifestation of a personal and loving God. But this is plainly not the transcendentalism of Emerson. Our author said to Dr. William Hague that fresh readings of the Quaker writers had intensified his con- viction that we must outgrow externalism. George Fox always remained one of his heroes; though, as Doctor Van Dyke remarks, he was himself " kept sane by his New England sense and humor." He saw how indistinct was the line that separated religious ecstasy from hysterical frenzy. Yet the inner light seemed to him the only medium of divine communication. Why should we not enjoy religion by revelation to us, he thought, instead of getting it through others? This suggests the fundamental defect in Emerson's char- acter. Both Henry James and John Morley have pointed out that Emerson had no sense of sin. He regarded his soul as the unresisting organ of the Over- Soul, and serene self-sufficiency characterized all his writing and all his action. He needed no teacher. His own finiteness and limitation never led him to distrust his own powers; his own sinfulness and guilt never EMERSON WITHOUT A SENSE OF SIN 67 taught him dependence on a Redeemer. His was not the humility of the Httle child which Jesus himself ex- emplifies, and which he makes the condition of entrance into his kingdom. Rather do we find in him a Stoic confidence that all is well, and an ignoring of the evil aspects of life, both in himself and in others. " The riddle of the painful earth " — human sin and shame and death — this has escaped the notice of the Sphinx, and the result is that Emerson lacks sympathy for the fallen and understanding of the world's great need. He had no experience of the Inferno of gtiilt and retri- bution, such as a keen conscience gave to Dante, and therefore he could know nothing of the Paradiso of the forgiven, nor of the Purgatorio of repentance and faith that prepares men for blessedness and likeness to God. He thought Dante " a man to put in a museum, but not in his house." Emerson's overgrown self-trust disdained to recog- nize himself as a sinner. " They that are whole need not a physician." He taught that man's shortcoming is not sin, but only a necessary stage in this progress. It is the " green apple theory " of moral evil. Sin is a green apple, which needs only time and sunshine and growth to bring it to ripeness and beauty and useful- ness. But alas! our sin is not a green apple that can be ripened by growth, but an apple with a worm at the heart, whose progress, i£ left to itself, is toward rot- tenness and ruin. Sin is apostasy and revolt of man's free will, which only supernatural means can cure. Emerson's false premise that we must look to physics, rather than to ethics, for our interpretation of God's being, leads him to the false conclusion that sin is 6S " GREEN APPLE THEORY " OF EVIL a necessity in the universe, and that it always results in good. When man's free will is left out of the account, there is no such thing as guilt or just con- demnation. In all evil man is ignorantly seeking good : " The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. "Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse."^ Out of the good of evil born, Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And the gods shook, they knew not why.® If these mysterious lines mean only that the forces of the universe are by an omniscient and beneficent will made even in spite of themselves to help the cause of truth and righteousness, they might be regarded as a cryptic declaration of Paul's doctrine that all things work together for good to them that love God. " Write it on your heart," says Emerson, " that every day is the best day in the year." Yes, we reply, if this means that our best days in the past have not ex- hausted God's power and love. But if it asserts an automatic inclination of evil toward good and that sin "The Sphinx." 3" Uriel." SIN ITS OWN REMEDY 69 is its own remedy, it teaches pernicious error. That this latter interpretation may be suspected to be the correct one finds some justification in Emerson's poem " The Park " : The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful, Which galls me everywhere. Yet spake yon purple mountain, Yet said yon ancient wood, That Night or Day, that Love or Crime, Leads all souls to the Good. Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame. Plans, credit, and the Muse, — Nothing refuse. Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go. The gods arrive.* I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line, All between that works or grows. Everything is kin of mine. Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. * " Give All to Love." 70 DISCORD NECESSARY TO HARMONY O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and artery, though ye kill me!^ One thing is forever good; That one thing is Success, — • Dear to the Eumenides, And to all the heavenly brood. Who bides at home, nor looks abroad, Carries the eagles, and masters the sword." These quotations show how far Emerson was from recognizing evil as a " body of death " which required a Dehverer. It is only a discord necessary to perfect harmony ; it is only the dark background without which we could not appreciate the bright ; it is indeed the soil from which truth and goodness must emerge. " Our crimes," he says, " may be lively stones, out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God." We must even see in moral evil a manifestation of God's nature : Higher far into the pure realm, Over sun and star. Over the flickering Daemon film, Thou must mount for love; Into vision where all form Into one only form dissolves; In a region where the wheel On which all beings ride Visibly revolves; Where the starred, eternal worm » " Mithridates." « " Destiny." *' EVIL GOOD, AND GOOD EVIL ** 7I Girds the world with bound and term; Where unlike things are like; Where good and ill, And joy and moan, Melt into one.^ " Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil," said the ancient prophet. Yet this ignoring of sin is the fundamental error of Emerson's teaching. There can be no question about his sincerity, and the sweet- ness and cheerfulness of his disposition. He had never experienced serious conflicts with his own nature, and he seldom, if ever, was conscious of moral imperfec- tion. In his early life indeed he writes : " Milton was enamored of moral perfection. He did not love it more than I. That which I cannot declare has been my angel from childhood until now. It has separated me from men. It has driven sleep from my bed. It has tortured me for my guilt. It has inspired me with hope." And his poem entitled " Grace " has lines which seem almost Christian : How much, preventing God, how much I owe To the defences thou hast round me set; Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, — These scorned bondmen were my parapet. I dare not peep over this parapet To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended. Had not these me against myself defended! But the remedy is all in self and not in God. Self, indeed, is an effluence and manifestation of God : ' " The Celestial Love." ^2 SALVATION BY CHARACTER So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low. Thou must. The youth replies, / can. ^ *•' The essence of Christianity," he says, '' is in its practical morals." We must summon up our better nature, our lofty ideals, our strength of will : Freedom's secret wilt thou know? — Counsel not with flesh and blood; Loiter not for cloak or food; Right thou feelest, rush to do." There is little comfort here for the sin-sick and despairing. Emerson preaches salvation by character, when man's first need is salvation from character. Yet we must concede that he presents a winning picture of Pelagian virtue. Father Taylor, the seaman's preacher, was severely orthodox, but when Emerson died, and some one intimated a doubt of his eternal fate, Taylor gallantly remarked : " Well, if Emerson has gone to hell, all I can say is that the climate will speedily change, and immigration will rapidly set in. He might think this or that, but he was more like Jesus Christ than any one I have ever known. The devil will not know what to do with him." But this same Father Taylor gave it as his verdict that " Emerson knows no more of the religion of the New Testament than Balaam's ass did of the principles of Hebrew gram- * " Voluntaries." • " Freedom.' THE POET THE EMANCIPATED MAN 73 II All that I have said thus far is meant as an intro- duction to his poetry, and to the understanding of its theological significance. Emerson's conception of poetry will help us here. To him the poet was the emancipated man, lifted into consciousness of his divine Original, with insight into the hidden meaning of the world, and foresight of the end to which the world is hastening : The free winds told him what they knew, Discoursed of fortune as they blew; And on his mind at dawn of day Soft shadows of the evening lay/" But he does not regard this elevation and ecstasy as peculiar to the poet: it is only an intensification of moods that belong at times to the common man : In the deep heart of man a poet dwells Who all the day of life his summer story tells." For this reason the poet appeals to the universal heart of man ; he rouses in us the same emotions that swayed himself; he teaches us the habit of thinking for ourselves. Emerson counted among " the traits common to all works of the highest art that they are universally intelligible, that they restore to us the simplest states of mind." i« " The Poet." « " The Enchanter." G i 74 CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE POETRY That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, Homer sung." To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds/^ This IS the first of Milton's essential characteristics of poetry: it must be *' simple, sensuous, passionate." But Emerson is not true to his own principle. He is not always simple, he is not always intelligible, and he is generally cold in temper rather than impassioned. The philosopher and the seer too often interfere with the poet. He must needs plunge into the unknown, and disclose things beyond all power of human speech : Ever the Poet from the land Steers his bark and trims his sail; Right out to sea his courses stand, New worlds to find in pinnace frail/* And when he has found truth undiscovered before, he must give it utterance in ways that will stir men's hearts by their novelty, even though they break with every tradition of meter and of rhyme. I doubt whether Emerson was ever consciously sensational, but his lordly method is not the method of true poetry, when he writes : Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, " " Solution." " " Quatrains." " " Quatrains." SUBSTANCE WITHOUT FORM IN EMERSON 75 He shall aye climb For his rhyme. * Pass in, pass in/ the angels say, * In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments oif the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.' ^° We have seen that Emerson had no ear for music. It is also plain that he never grappled with metrical problems, or realized that the laws of harmony are laws of God. He can make such imperfect rhymes as worm and form, pans and romance, feeble and peo- ple, abroad and Lord, sodden and forgotten, hear and are, shrine and within. There is a jerkiness and dis- sonance about many of his verses which reveal a fundamental artistic defect, as well as a careless au- dacity. We must credit him with the substance of poetry, but must deny that he has mastered its form. He is a stranger to the melody of Shelley ; and, though Goethe was one of his demigods, that supreme literary artist did not influence him to follow his example. The result is an obscure and disjointed verse, with occa- sional bursts of trumpetlike and thrilling beauty ; while the real power of his writing is to be found mainly in his prose. I cannot assent to Stedman's characteriza- tion of him as " our most typical and inspiring poet." Theodore Parker called Emerson " a poet lacking the accomplishment of verse " — which means that his gift was that of poetical prose. Matthew Arnold said well that Emerson's is the most important work of the nineteenth century in prose, as Wordsworth's is the » " ATerlin." 'jd Emerson's idea of god most important work of that same century in poetry; and to that estimate we may well subscribe. When I seek to illustrate Emerson's theological ideas by citations from his verse, I am met with the ever-out- standing fact that all his poetry is an endless reiteration of one great truth, together with an ignoring of the other truth which prevents it from' having all the effect of error. There is a pendulum swing in human thought. Divinity and humanity, fate and freedom, each has its rights. Woe be to the age that builds its system of thought upon either one to the exclusion of the other! The pendulum will certainly swing to the opposite extreme. New England had become Armin- ian and sterile ; the fountains of the great deep needed to be broken up; Emerson showed us an open heaven and a present God. In this he did a service to his generation.. " Unlovely, nay, frightful," he says, " is the solitude of the soul without God." But this recog- nition passes immediately into identification. The soul that recognizes God becomes itself God, and God him- self becomes another name for our human life and activity : This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, Floods with blessings unawares. Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine. What God is this, who cannot or will not hear the prayers of his worshipers and who is indistinguishable from ourselves ? This is indeed the Roman Jove ; it is not our Father who is in heaven. The pagan God is not God at all, but only an idol of the human imagi- EMERSON S VIEW OF PRAYER 77 nation, a creation of our human selfishness and sin. The blessings with which he floods us unawares come from no mind of justice or heart of love. No com- munion with him is possible; he is simply the imper- sonal spirit of the universe, the nature-god of panthe- ism, a god who has no eye to pity and no arm to save in the stern emergencies of men's need. What was Emerson's doctrine of prayer? He cer- tainly did not believe in petition for specific gifts or blessings. That, to his mind, would be impudence, and insult to law and Lawgiver. " Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious." " Men's prayers are a disease of the will, as their creeds are a disease of the intellect." Yet prayer is natural to man ; it may lift him into harmony with the divine will ; it may give him new insight and cour- age. It will be sheer perversion to expect any alter- ation in things external to ourselves. Emerson gave up public prayer, as he gave up the Lord's Supper, be- cause he regarded it as encouraging superstition : When success exalts thy lot, God for thy virtue lays a plot: And all thy life is for thine own, Then for mankind's instruction shown; And though thy knees were never bent, To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent, And whether formed for good or ill, Are registered and answered still.^* O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?" 16 '< Prayer." " " Good-bye." 78 THE " PISTAREEN PROVIDENCE " In the name of Godhead, I The morrow front, and can defy; Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid.^* But God's " conquering aid " is really nothing but the new determination of the human soul, and God is but a figure of speech : Around the man who seeks a noble end. Not angels but divinities attend/* Emerson scoffs at the " pistareen Providence " of George Miiller and his Orphan Houses. Piety, he thinks, is here " pulled down to the pantry and the shoe-closet, till we are distressed for fresh air, God coming precisely as he is called for, to the hour and minute." Yet Jesus said, " Ask, and ye shall receive " ; and Paul urges us, " in everything by prayer and sup- plication with thanksgiving," to let our " requests be made known unto God." Emerson's God does not hear and cannot answer prayer. He spoke of " the burdensome doctrine of a Deity.'* But he meant only to clear himself of definitions, and to accept whatever impressions came to him, mutually contradictory though they might be. This gives an appearance of fairness to his writings, though it really shows that he had no settled belief with regard to the most serious questions that vex the soul. " Cannot I trust the Goodness that has uplifted to uphold me? " he says. " I cannot find in the world, without or within, any antidote, any bulwark, against this fear, " " The Nun's Aspiration." " " Life." TRUTH WHAT MEN TROW 79 like this : the frank acknowledgment of unbounded de- pendence. Let into the heart that is filled with pros- perity the idea of God, and it smooths the giddy preci- pices of human pride to a substantial level." He can even acknowledge " the wholesomeness of Calvinism for thousands and thousands. I would not discourage their scrupulous religious observances." Calvinism, he holds, " is an imperfect version of the moral law. Uni- tarianism is another." " It is well for my Protestantism that there is no Cathedral in Concord. Unitarians for- get that men are poets. . . I have very good grounds for being a Unitarian, and for being a Trinitarian too. . . The highest revelation is that God is in every man. Our reason is not to be distinguished from the divine essence ; and all forms of doctrine are but shadows and symbols of invisible reality." Ever the Rock of Ages melts Into the mineral air, To be the quarry whence to build Thought and its mansions fair. Ascending through just degrees To a consummate holiness, As angel blind to trespass done, And bleaching all souls like the sun.^ Oh what is Heaven but the fellowship Of minds that each can stand against the world By its own meek and incorruptible will?^ On this theory, truth is simply what men " trow," and things are what men " think." All reality is subjective. 20 " Life." ^ " Self-reliance," lines added in 1833. 8o THE INFINITUDE OF A MAN In spite of these shortcomings, Emerson's positive doctrine was a blessing to New England. " The in- finitude of the private man," and the possibility of his first-hand acquaintance with the Deity, were lessons which the church and the world greatly needed to learn. Sacraments and Bible were never intended as a substi- tute for direct communion with Christ. Much that our author says of God in the soul, and of the soul's expression of God in the world, is capable of a Chris- tian interpretation. Emerson never reaches a greater height of imaginative fervor than in his poem entitled " The Problem," and this alone will give him enduring fame, when other works of his are forgotten, though even here there is mingled with a noble recognition of God's working in humanity a fatal denial of any worth in the externals of religion : I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; — The conscious stone to beauty grew. These temples grew as grows the grass; Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; SLIGHTING ALLUSIONS TO CHRIST 8 1 And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. The final test of a poet's worth must be his concep- tion of Christ. By his attitude toward our Lord he will be judged at the last day, and by that standard Christian people must judge him now. He who does not accept Christ as Lord of all fails to recognize him as Lord at all. To a Christian heart, Emerson's slighting and half-contemptuous allusions to Jesus are deeply painful. He seems to take pleasure in tearing the crown from the brow of our Redeemer. " My brothers, my mother, my companions, must be much more to me, in all respects of friendship, than he can be." He regards the incarnation as poorly expressing the eternal indwelling of God in man. He had wished that his son Might break his daily bread With prophet, savior and head; That he might cherish for his own The riches of sweet Mary's Son, Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon.^ Christianity, he acknowledges, is " the most em- phatic affirmation of man's spiritual nature. But not 2» " Threnody." 82 JESUS RANKED WITH THE GREAT the only one, nor the last. There shall be a thou- sand more." For what need I of book or priest, Or sibyl from the mummied East, When every star is Bethlehem star? I count as many as there are Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, So many saints and saviors, So many high behaviors Salute the bard who is alive And only sees what he doth give.^ Emerson ranks Jesus among the great men of the races. Christian associations, he says, are " the fruit of the life and teachings of the lowly Nazarene. An obscure man, in an obscure crowd, brought forward a new Scripture. His cross has been erected, and it has been to some a pillar of cloud, and to some a pillar of fire." But he puts our Lord side by side with Plato and Philo and Shakespeare : One in a Judaean manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe.^* I see all human wits Are measured by a few; Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits. Lone as the blessed Jew.^' If Emerson had taken conscience instead of nature for his guide, he would have found the key to the world's great problem, and would have appreciated the solution which is furnished in Jesus Christ, for » " The Poet." « « Song of Nature." » " Shakspeare." " JESUS WOULD ABSORB THE RACE '* 83 the revelation of saving love in Jesus Christ is the only remedy for the world's guilt and misery. But Emer- son could see in Christ only the likeness of himself. He speaks condescendingly of " that best and dearest saint," " that excellent teacher whom God sent," " not a solitary, but still a lovely herald " ; but he discoun- tenances the " noxious exaggeration of the person of Jesus," and he banished that person from genuine religion. He praises " the lowliness of the blessed soul that walked in Judea and hallowed that land for- ever " ; but he thought he could not himself be a man, if he " must subordinate his nature to Christ's nature." " Jesus would absorb the race," he said, " but Tom Paine, or the coarsest blasphemer, helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power." He failed to see that Jesus not only absorbs but transforms, and that we grow, only by the impact of nobler souls than our own. The age-long yearning of the human race for God in human form made no impression on him. " That exalted person who died on Calvary," he thinks, " will be better loved by not being adored." " Only a barbarous state of society thought to add to his dignity by making him King, and God." Emerson broke with his church and left the .ministry because he could not celebrate the Lord's Supper — it implied a profounder reverence for Jesus than he could give him. " It seemed to me at church to-day," he says, " that the communion service, as it is now and here celebrated, is a document of the dulness of the race. How these, my good neighbors, the bending deacons, with their cups and plates, would have straightened themselves to sturdiness, if the proposition 84 *' MANY SAINTS AND SAVIORS " came before them to honor thus a fellow man ! " Yes, verily! And it was only common honesty on Emer- son's part, when he came to regard Jesus as only one of " many saints and saviors," to give up his clerical office and thenceforth substitute the lecture platform for the pulpit. His teaching was no longer " crip- pled by making it depend on Jesus." But it also be- came merely the fallible message of a human seer, instead of the power of God unto salvation. Of him- self he said well, " I find in me no enthusiasm, no resources, for the instruction and guidance of the people." A Nature-God cannot hate evil, for it is his creation, and a preliminary and partial manifestation of his own being. Though Emerson has been called the teacher of Puritan ethics, as Jonathan Edwards was the teacher of Puritan religion, it would be difficult to mention any principle more subversive of morals than is Emerson's dictum that moral evil is only privative, as darkness is only the absence of light. Sin is no longer the positive assertion of a godless will, but is merely the absence of knowledge, the effect of ignorance, to be removed by education. It is not enmity to God, or even unlike- ness to him. God is no longer holy, since sin is or- dained by him as a means of ultimate perfection. The selfishness and pride and hate and lust of man are only good in the making ; the stumbling of the child in order that he may learn to walk. Emerson becomes, like Carlyle, a worshiper of successful force. Whatever is, is right, and his optimism can find good in Cain and in Judas. His poem entitled " Cupido " is a practical avowal of this pantheism : WORSHIP OF SUCCESSFUL FORCE 85 The solid, solid universe Is pervious to Love; With bandaged eyes he never errs, Around, below, above. His blinding light He flingeth white On God's and Satan's brood, And reconciles By mystic wiles The evil and the good. In his " Xenophanes " he propounds this same doc- trine of absolute unity in its most extreme form : All things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. Beheld far off, they part As God and devil; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. Over me soared the eternal sky. Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird; — Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.^® All this means, not that the world is the symbol of spirit, but that the world is spirit. " God is the life of all. Every mountain is a Sinai ; every tree a burn- ing bush ; every breeze a still, small voice. Each soul is an expression of the Over-Soul, and reigns supreme over matter." As positive and negative are two in- 2« " Each and All." B6 " BRAHMA '' separable poles of the magnet, so matter and mind, good and evil, are alike manifestations of the universal Spirit. The poem " Cupido," in spite of its poetical beauty, and of the Christian interpretation which may be given to its opening lines, is Hindu and pagan in essence. The author's poem " Brahma " indeed is only a rendering in English of that heathen and immoral philosophy : If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt. And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. What is this but a confounding of all moral dis- tinctions? We should not wish never to have sinned, for sin is necessary to the development of holiness. " For the intellect," Emerson says, " there is no crime. . . Saints are sad, because they behold sin from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intel- lect — a confusion of thought. . . Man, though in brothels or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true. . . The carrion that rots in the AMALGAMATION OF HEAVEN AND HELL &y sun, the criminal who breaks every law of God and man, are on their way to blessedness. LEvil is part of the discipline by which the soul is restored to union with the Over-Soul. The less we have to do with our sins, the better. No man can afford to waste his mo- ments in compunctions." All evil is undeveloped good. This has been well called " the higher synthesis of the Devil and the Deity. 'J If Emerson is not worthy of the title, which Carlyle invented for another, of *' President of the Heaven and Hell Amalgamation Society," he certainly can be said to have devised an excuse for all human passion, and a slander upon the holiness of God. When individual men become mere figureheads and automata for the divine inworking, they cease to be objects of our special regard. Emerson confessed his inability to enter into intimate personal relations with others. His friendships were of the cool intellectual sort ; " there were fences between him and his dearest friends " ; he was slow to appreciate or to advocate the cause of the slave; he cared for man in the abstract rather than for real men. The only God he knew was within his own soul. Paul declared that all things are ours because we enter into Christ's inheritance; Emerson held that all things are ours by original right, and that Christ enters into our inheritance instead : I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.^'' ^ Motto to the " Essay on History." / 88 MAN WRONGED " In self-trust," he said, " all the virtues are com- pounded. Man has been wronged; men are of no account. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire." He questions the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. One must not be hindered by consideration for others. The true end of being is development of the self. This seems dangerously near to Paul's description of " the man of sin," who " sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." It is the " Overman " of Nietzsche, claiming the right to realize self and to put down all that stands in his way. It is the view of Ibsen, who, in " The Doll's House," makes Nora put self-realization before wifehood and motherhood. " Obligation to put all poor men into good situations?" says Emer- son. " Are they my poor ? . . I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong." The least and lowest of all the sons of men had worth enough for Jesus to make him willing to suffer and die in his behalf. The parable of the Good Samaritan showed who is my neighbor. But the evangelization of men did not interest Emerson. He was greatly amused that the American Baptist Missionary Union attempted the conversion of France; and when asked what he would do with the Hottentots of Africa, he replied, " Just what I would do with one of their ant-hills — step on it." And in his poem " Alphonso " he writes : Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!' My counsel is, Kill nine in ten, EMERSON^S DEBT TO CHMST 89 And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal. So shall ye have a man of the sphere, Fit to grace the solar year. And yet, all of Emerson's optimism, his recognition of God in nature, his love of country, his hope for the future, were drawn from Christ. These things were not, before Christ came. It is Christ who has glorified nature and man; it is he who has inspired hope for the individual and for society. The classic writers were pessimists ; to them the world seemed given over to evil, and to be nearing destruction. Apocalypticism was only the reflection in religious minds of such fears as possessed Cicero and Seneca. The very dignity of man, which Emerson fancied to be his peculiar message and discovery, was the revelation of Him who thought each human soul of such worth that he died to save it. On this ladder Emerson has climbed to his calm faith in the divine indwelling and in man's certainty of progress. It was blindness and ingrati- tude in him to throw down the ladder by which he had climbed. Let us be thankful for the truth he utters, though he is far from uttering the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We owe much to him for his insight into the meaning of nature. There is a spirit in matter; nothing in this world is dead; every leaf and every breeze is symbolic; God speaks to us in the heavens above and in the earth beneath : Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 90 INSIGHT INTO MEANING OF NATURE But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave each other know Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part, Rooted in the mighty Heart. Behind thee leave thy merchandise. Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peacock wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind; Leave all thy pedant lore apart; God hid the whole world in thy heart. All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive. Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation. From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.^ There are snatches and bursts of melody in the midst of tame and rambling verse, such as : Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Come see the north wind's masonry. The frolic architecture of the snow.^ For the world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder. The sun obeys them and the moon.^ 28 •• Woodnotes," II. ^ " The Snow-storm." *• " Monadnoc." BURSTS OF MELODY 9 1 Brother, sweeter is the Law Than all the grace Love ever saw; We are its suppliants. By it, we Draw the breath of Eternity .^^ For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates;"^^ The sun set, but set not his hope: — Stars rose, his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy. Deeper and older seemed his eye. And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of Time.^^ 'Tis not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cup of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There alway, alway something sings.^ What Emerson says of Goethe we may well apply to himself : Is he hapless who can spare In his plenty things so rare? With his view that man is immediately inspired by God, Emerson may be expected to be an apostle of human freedom. And so he is, if we look at man in the abstract, for individual men did not seem to him so worthy of his notice. On prince or bride no diamond stone Half so gracious ever shone, As the light of enterprise Beaming from a young man's eyes.'" ^ " The Poet." 32 « Fate." ^ " The Poet." 3* " Music." 35 Translations. 92 APOSTLE OF ABSTRACT FREEDOM Ever in the strife of your own thoughts Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome: That shall command a senate to your side; For there is no might in the universe That can contend with love. It reigns forever.'* The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.'' He that feeds men serveth few; He serves all who dares be true.^ O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire. . . For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man.^ The " Boston Hymn," read in the Music Hall, January I, 1863, is a stirring eulogy of American liberty: The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside. And filled their hearts with flame. God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Written at Rome." ^ " Heroism." The Celestial Love." ^ " Ode " at Concord. EMERSON NOT A CONTROVERSIALIST 93 Come, East and West and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes. My will fulfilled shall be. For, in daylight or in dark. My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark. He wrote an " Inscription for a Well in Memory of the Martyrs of the War " : Fall, stream, from Heaven to bless; return as well; So did our sons; Heaven met them as they fell. Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — * 'Tis man's perdition to be safe. When for the truth he ought to die.'*" But conflict was not our poet's native air. He was no reasoner and no controversialist. It took him a long time to realize that secession and rebellion in our Southern States must be put down. It has some- times been said that he was never angry, and his unvarying serenity has been used to disparage our Lord's denunciations of Scribes and Pharisees. Such praise is virtual condemnation; for real love for the good is inseparable from indignation against the evil. The true God is not indifferent to moral relations — he is a Gk)d of fearful justice, of awful purity, of searching love, and holiness is fundamental in his be- ing. Frothingham, in his " Transcendentalism in New England," intimates that Emerson was not devoid of indignation against wrong, and tells us that he could *• " Sacrifice." 94 SWEETNESS AND BENIGNITY imitate Jesus' doom of the barren fig tree. He cer- tainly denounced Daniel Webster and spoke of that " filthy Fugitive Slave Law," which Webster com- mended to New England. When Sumner was smit- ten, he said, " I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom." But such wrath was exceedingly rare. Henry James remarks that Emer- son " never caught a glimpse of the cherubim and the flaming sword, but put forth his hand direct to the tree of life." Sweetness and benignity characterized his common demeanor. He moved among men as one whose head was in the clouds, and who was oblivious of the petty jangling and contention of sublunary affairs. He dealt with principles rather than with details, with pure rather than with applied science. *' I live wholly from within," he said. John Morley classes him with Rousseau, Robespierre, and Carlyle, as "beginning with sentiment and ignoring reason"; as having " great feeling for right, but also great con- tempt for the only instruments by which we can make sure what right is." And we may add that Emerson would have been less tranquil, but more useful, if he had recognized an external divine revelation. He saw " no urgent necessity for Heaven's last revelation, since the laws of morality had been written before, and philosophy had lively dreams of immortality." Here we see that our poet conceived of Christianity, not as God's gift of pardon for the violation of law, nor as God's gift of power to obey law, but solely as an ethical philosophy which throws men back upon their own insight and ability — a sorry resource for a convicted sinner. VIEW OF IMMORTALITY 95 Did Emerson believe in personal immortality? It is very doubtful. If God is impersonal, and man is to be merged at last in God, the less faith we have in individual existence beyond the grave, the better. Yet, with the mystics, he did not believe in annihilation. " God upholds us with his uncreated power," he says, " and keeps the soul still herself." And some of his interpreters, like Cooke, maintain that he rejects the individual, local, and selfish, but retains the personal, divine, and eternal. One can find in his writings oc- casional utterances that encourage faith. "Life is not long enough for art, or for friendship," he declares. " The soul does not age with the body." He is " sure that in the other life we will be permitted to finish the work begun in this." But then he also says : " A future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time." He believes in the future, only because he has God in the present. But whether we shall know each other beyond the grave is " a school-dame question." Even the " Threnody," which expresses his grief at the death of his beautiful young son, gives us no certain assur- ance that he ever expected to meet him again. In the shadow of that affliction he wrote to Carlyle : " I dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold, to in- quire what relations to my departed ones I yet sus- tain." He speaks of " the inarticulateness of the Supreme Power," and asks : " How can we insatiate hearers, perceivers, and thinkers, ever reconcile us to it? My divine temple, which all angels seemed to love to build, was shattered in a night." This is surely far short of the comfort which Christ gives to his dis- 96 ciples, and it shows that in his sorrow our author needed more than any inner light could give him. The " Threnody " is painful reading to one who believes that Christ has brought life and immortality to light in his glorious gospel, and it reminds us of the sad and uncertain inscriptions upon the monuments of the dead in classic times. Listen to these words: The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return. Not mine, — I never called thee mine, But Nature's heir, — if I repine, And seeing rashly torn and moved Not what I made, but what I loved. Grow early old with grief that thou Must to the wastes of Nature go, — 'Tis because a general hope Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. What is excellent. As God lives, is permanent; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; Hearts love will meet thee again. Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye Up to his style, and manners of the sky. Silent rushes the swift Lord Through ruined systems still restored, Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, Plants with worlds the wilderness; A LIKENESS TO SCHLEIERMACHER 97 Waters with tears of ancient sorrow Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. House and tenant go to ground, Lost in God, in Godhead found. Schleiermacher's touching address at the funeral of his only son furnishes a remarkable parallel to this poem. They both exhibit a calm confidence that all is well, without certainty of future reunion. So far as Emerson was concerned, Jesus might never have lived, and might never have opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. He would have been content, he said, " to be a good Roman in the days of Cicero. I burn after the '' aliquid immensum iniinitumque ' which Cicero desired." Like Marcus Aurelius, he had the self-repression and the self-assertion of the Stoic. Calm and benignant, a New England Brahmin, living in an upper air of thought, he had no eye for the tragedy of the world and for its need of redemption. He moved among men with something of Goethe's majestic composure. Doctor Holmes tells us that he was fully six feet in height, but spare in build and weighing only one hundred and forty pounds. Blue eyes, brown hair, sloping shoulders, all marked him for an idealist. He had no ear for music, never in- dulged in loud laughing, was no mathematician or mechanic. The seeing eye was his, as he himself said, but not the working hand. He was never hungry, though he always had pie for breakfast, and only re- plied to Oliver Wendell Holmes's remonstrance with the na'ive question, "Why, what is pie for?" He rose at seven, drank coffee and tea, and took to his bed at ten in the evening. He complained of his 98 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS own debility, procrastination, and inefficiency; yet he was instant in season and out of season at his work of reading, thinking, and writing; so that the amount of his literary product, though small in poetry, is in prose extraordinarily large. Emerson was not only sincere in his thinking — he was also honest in his utterances. The condensation and pithiness of every sentence in his conversation and in his writing were the fruit of much pondering of phrase. " To give the thought just and full expres- sion," he says, " I must not prematurely utter it. It is as if you let the spring snap too soon." We know what is meant by " going off at half-cock." There was something attractive and impressive in his frequent waiting for the proper word, and in his triumphant seizure of that word when it came to mind. This painstaking, however, became too much of a habit, and it led to paralysis. In his latter days he was afflicted with great loss of memory. First the names of per- sons, and then the names of the most familiar things, passed from him. But this affliction seemed never to disturb his tranquillity. He smiled at himself; took the needed word from others, went on in perfect com- posure. It was affecting to see him at the funeral of Longfellow. He paid respect by his presence to one of his lifelong friends, a poet like himself, and one more widely popular. At the close of the service he turned to his companion and said : " The gentleman whose funeral we have been attending was a sweet and beautiful soul, but — I have forgotten his name." And in less than a twelvemonth Emerson had followed Longfellow. 99 He was what he was, and we must value the good, even while we deprecate the evil. He grasped one of the greatest truths, and that one truth gave him a resting-place and fortress from which he could look out calmly upon the world. As years increased, he could write: Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old; Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift, The warm rosebuds below." Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; But now, proud world! I'm going home.*^ When frail Nature can no more, Then the Spirit strikes the hour; My servant Death, with solving rite, Poiirs finite into infinite.*^ And in all literature there are few anticipations of death more composed and stalwart than Emerson's poem entitled " Terminus " : It is time to be old, To take in sail: — ' The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore. Came to me in his fatal rounds. And said, * No more! *i " The World-SouL" " Good-bye." « " Threnody." ICXD A NON-ETHICAL MONIST No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent.' As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: * Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near. And every wave is charmed.' This is beautiful and impressive; but it gives no ground for trust to a sinner. The apostle has a better hope ; knows whom he has believed ; and is persuaded that he will keep that which he has committed to him against the great inevitable day. Aye, more than this, he has a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a monist. He held that there is but one substance, ground, or principle of be- ing, namely, God. Scripture asserts this doctrine, when it teaches the divine omnipresence and immanence. If Emerson had taught only this, he might have been of unqualified benefit to his generation. But Scripture teaches other truths which qualify this — I mean the truth of God's transcendence and personality, and the truth of man's distinct personality as reflecting the per- sonality of God. There are two sorts of monism — an ethical monism which recognizes these ethical facts \ in God and in man, and a non-ethical monism which isrnores or denies them. It was a non-ethical monism THE AUTHORITY OF NATURAL l!MPULSE lOI to which Emerson held. Deity so absorbed humanity that there was little room left for freedom, or re- sponsibility, or sin, or guilt, or atonement, or retribu- tion. Unitarianism demonstrated its logical insuffi- ciency by its lapse from ethical standards. The high Arianism of Channing degenerated into the half- fledged pantheism of Emerson. While we recognize the great truth which Emerson proclaimed — the truth of metaphysical monism, or the doctrine of one sub- stance, principle, or ground of being — we must also insist on the complementary truth which he ignored or denied — the truth of psychological dualism, or the doc- trine that man's soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand, and from God on the other. Emerson did not regard himself as a pantheist. He cared little for names. He was bent only upon seizing whatever truth there was in pantheism, while he still held to the essentials of theism. But he was un- consciously influenced by naturalistic prepossessions, and he did not sufficiently realize that nature must be interpreted by man, and not man by nature. The God that nature gave him was a God devoid of moral at- tributes, a God who was author of evil as well as of good, a God who manifested himself only in law, a God who could hold no personal intercourse with his crea- tures, a God incapable of revelation or redemption. Man is thrown back upon his own powers. The only God he knows is in his own soul. An exaggerated self-appreciation takes the place of worship; natural impulse becomes the only authority ; self-realization is the only end. Thus a non-ethical monism is ultimate deification of self, and Emerson is " the friend and 102 lUE DRIFT OF EMERSON*S INFLUENCE aider of those who would live in the spirit," not in the sense of leading them to receive and obey the Spirit of God, but by blinding them to the truth and giving them over to the spirit of evil. In his early days Emerson quoted with approbation our Saviour's words, " If ye do my Father's will, ye shall know of the doctrine." It was not an exact quo- tation, but it had awakened a responsive emotion in his heart. We are led to wonder what Emerson's in- fluence would have been, if he had heeded that ad- monition and had yielded his allegiance to him whom God has sent to reveal and to save. That matchless gift of fresh and incisive utterance might then have been used in winning men to Christ, whereas it has often drawn men away from him; it might have led men through Christ to God, whereas it has often held before them a vague abstraction which eludes while it attracts. The God of the pantheist is no God for the ignorant or the sinful or the dying. In so far as he taught men of a present God in nature and in history, we can apply to him the words of Christ, " He that is not against us is for us." But in so far as he ignored and denied Christ's deity and atonement and authority. Dr. William Hague's judgment upon Em- erson must be ours — a judgment all the more fitting because it repeats the words of Christ himself : " He that is not with me is against me ; and he that gather- eth fiot with me scattereth abroad." Emerson died on the twenty-seventh day of April, 1882. Cabot tells us, very simply and beautifully, that on the following Sunday, April the thirtieth, in Sleepy Hollow, a grove consecrated as a burial-place on the IN THE CATHEDRAL OF NATURE IO3 edge of the village of Concord, and at the foot of a tall pine tree upon the top of the ridge in the highest part of the grounds, Emerson's body was laid, not far from the graves of Hawthorne and of Thoreau, and sur- rounded by those of his kindred. His mortal remains rest in the Cathedral of Nature, whose life he strove to absorb and to interpret; and since he uttered at least some truth of value to his generation and to the world, we may still say : Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him! Ill JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Of all our American poets, Whittier is the most American. He is no exotic. Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and even Bryant, with all their effort to escape from foreign standards, were unconsciously influenced by classical or by English literature. Whittier was rooted more deeply than they in the New England soil, drew his sustenance from men rather than from books, and bore genuinely native fruits of sincerity and free- dom. Like Robert Burns, who first kindled in him the ambition to be a poet, he was too poor to go to college. But poverty and hardship gave him sympathy with all sufferers, and made his verse the unsophisticated ex- pression of common human needs and aspirations. His religious nature recognized in all its impulses, not so much the Over-Soul that thinks, as the Over-Heart that throbs, in all humanity; and this reference of the inner light to its personal divine source consecrated his poetry. If Burns was the national lyrist of Scot- land, then Whittier is the national lyrist of America. His is a homespun verse, but it is the utterance of a patriot and a prophet, even more truly than was the poetry of Burns. It is profoundly and pervasively re- ligious. His political poems are half-battles, because 107 I08 PURITANISM AND QUAKERISM they are half-prayers. And the spirit of them is that which he celebrates in his " Prophecy of Samuel Sewall": Praise and thanks for an honest man! — Glory to God for the Puritan! Whittier was a Quaker, and Quakerism was Puritan- ism carried to its logical extreme. The Puritan had renounced allegiance to the papacy, and had asserted his right of immediate access to God, without interven- tion of priest or sacrament. But he put Scripture in the place of the church, as the infallible rule of faith and practice, and this semi-deification of external au- thority led to deadness of feeling. George Fox re- volted from the formalism into which the church had sunk. He trembled and quaked in the felt presence of the living God. He found One, " even Christ Jesus, who could speak to his condition." He dis- covered anew the spirituality of true religion, and longed to impart this discovery to others. He began a public ministry, going through England on foot and at his own charges, that the people " might receive Christ Jesus." This was the beginning of Quakerism. Fox did not deny the authority of Scripture, but he put the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit side by side with Scrip- ture as its supplement and interpreter. Barclay, the theologian of the sect, declared that " Whatsoever any do, pretending to the Spirit, which is contrary to the Scriptures, should be accounted and reckoned a de- lusion of the Devil." There were, however, even in that day, members of the Society who so exaggerated WHITTIER AN ORTHODOX QUAKER lOQ the importance of their personal experience as to make the inner light modify and even supersede the outward and written revelation. The Hicksite party in America was only a recrudescence of that early tendency. As they could deny the special inspiration of Scripture, they could also substitute Christ in the heart for the historic Christ, and the very foundations of Christian faith gave way. John Greenleaf Whittier never fa- vored these aberrations of doctrine. He was to the last an Orthodox Quaker, holding the Scriptures to be " a rule, not the rule of faith and practice, which is none other than the omnipresent Spirit of God — a sub- ordinate, secondary, and declaratory rule — they testify of Christ within." ^ And at his eightieth anniversary he read the lines : Scotland shall flourish while each peasant learns The psalms of David and songs of Burns. The inner promptings of the spirit, independent of book or reason, are an uncertain indication of duty, and a frail support in sorrow. The inner light, so far as it is trustworthy, has its source outside of itself, and is to be tested and corrected by God's external revela- tion. We are to " try the spirits, whether they be from God." As all the light of day comes from the sun, so all the light of conscience comes from Christ, " the Light that lighteth every man." And faith is the eye which receives his light and purifies the light within. Whittier was a believer in Christ. He also believed in an immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. " Some- thing outside of myself speaks to me and holds me to > Letter to Richard Nott, 1840. no PROTEST AGAINST PURITAN INTOLERANCE duty, warns, reproves, and approves — a revelation of God." So he writes. But this mysticism is corrected by recognizing the inspiration and authority of Scrip- ture, and the oneness of the Christ within with the historic Christ who suffered and died on Calvary. It is no wonder that eccentricities of Quaker doc- trine brought down upon many members of the Society the strong arm of the law. When they were moved to interrupt the worship of the churches by their de- nunciations, and to defy the authorities by parading naked through the streets, the inner light seemed only another name for insanity. In England and in America alike, they were imprisoned and exiled. Mary Dyer and three male Friends were hanged on Boston Common, and female members of the sect were stripped to the waist, whipped unmercifully, and driven out into the wilderness. To shelter them was a crime. Doctor Ellis claimed that the Quakers were as much to blame for being hanged as the Puritans were for hanging them. But Whittier indignantly replied that Puritan intolerance had turned the heads of unoffend- ing Christians, and had compelled them to their strange methods of testimony: " God is our witness," the victims cried, "We suffer for Him who for all men died; The wrong ye do has been done before, We bear the stripes that the Master bore! "^ The founder of the Whittier family in New England was Thomas Whittier, who came to this country in 1638. He was not himself a Quaker, though he knew =■ " How the Women Went from Dover." AN INHERITANCE OF BLOOD AND PRINCIPLES III of George Fox and sympathized with his doctrine. Haverhill, thirty miles north of Boston, was then an outpost of civilization, with a hundred miles of wilder- ness and roving bands of Indians beyond it. Here, in its East Parish, and in a beautiful bend of the Merrimac, though out of sight to any other settler, Thomas Whittier made his home and reared a stal- wart family of five sons and five daughters. His grandson Joseph married a Greenleaf, of probably Huguenot descent, since the name seems to be the French Feuillevert Anglicized. Our poet was the grandson of this grandson. His father was a devout member of the Society of Friends, and his mother one of the loveliest and saintliest of women. In her veins was the blood of Stephen Bachiler, an English Nonconformist and an Oxford man, who had come to America to avoid persecution. Bachiler's daughter Susannah was the grandmother of Daniel Webster, so that John Greenleaf Whittier and Daniel Webster were cousins. It must be remembered that the Friends were men of peace. They asked only the privilege of worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. It was the same right which the Puritans claimed for themselves. But the Puritans denied it to others, and there grew up in Massachusetts an autocracy and a hierarchy as intolerant and cruel as that from which Quakers and Huguenots had fled across the sea. Our poet grew up in an atmosphere of intense indignation against this intolerance, while at the same time the spirit of revolt was held in check by the principles of peace, and by the faith that God would in due time 112 QUAKER LIFE AND DOCTRINE vindicate the right. On the nineteenth of October, 1658, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted that '* any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers " should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of death, from the jurisdiction of the commonwealth. On a painting by Abbey commemorating this decree Whittier wrote his poem entitled '' Banished from Massachusetts " : The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. We must remember that Quakers called themselves " Friends," not primarily because they were friends to one another or to mankind, but because, like Abraham, they were conscious of being the chosen friends of God, and of living in fellowship with him. In " The Penn- sylvania Pilgrim," Whittier has given us a vivid de- scription of Quaker life and doctrine : Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught. One faith alone, so broad that all mankind Within themselves its secret witness find, The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied. The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. The Light of Life shone round him; one by one The wandering lights, that all-misleading run, Went out like candles paling in the sun. QUAKER HABITS OF WHITTIER II3 That Light he followed, step by step, where'er It led, as in the vision of the seer The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes Watching the living splendor sink or rise, Its will their will, knowing no otherwise. Within himself he found the law of right, He walked by faith and not the letter's sight, And read his Bible by the Inward Light. His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold, A truer idyl than the bards have told Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. Whittier was a birthright member of the Society. He gloried in his ancestry, adhered to their sober dress, used the " thee " and " thou " of their traditional speech. He attended Quaker meetings, though he sel- dom or never spoke in them; his only criticism upon these meetings was indeed that " there was too much speaking in them." He would not by his presence countenance the marriage of a Quaker to one outside of the Society, though he did send a poem to the married pair. He was never in a theater or a circus. When member of the legislature, he would take no oath, nor address the chair. He would not wear crape, nor use the ordinary dates. He owned no master but the Lord. He hated priests and kings, and abhorred the Puritan theocracy. But his independence was quiet and unresisting, though his mother and his aunt melted the wax figure of a clergyman that his soul might go to its doom in hell. In the days when Puseyism was rife, he wrote : " Has thee noticed the general tendency toward the old trust in man — in priests and sacrifices. 114 WHITTIER AND EMERSON in ghostly mummery and machinery ? To me it seems to bid fair to swallow up everything but Quakerism of the old stamp — rejection of all ceremonial, total dis- belief in the power of pope, priest, or elder to give a ransom for the soul of another." The Quaker of the olden time! How calm and firm and true, Unspotted by its wrong and crime, He walked the dark earth through. He walked by faith and not by sight. By love and not by law; The presence of the wrong or right He rather felt than saw. And, pausing not for doubtful choice Of evils great or small, He listened to that inward voice Which called away from all. O Spirit of that early day. So pure and strong and true, Be with us in the narrow way Our faithful fathers knew. Give strength the evil to forsake. The cross of Truth to bear, And love and reverent fear to make Our daily lives a prayer.^ Whittier was indeed a Quaker of the olden time. The inner light upon which he depended was a very different light from that which was recognized by Emerson. Emerson's light was the light of nature; Whittier's was the light of Christ. Emerson regarded the fixed successions of the physical world as the 3 •' The Quaker of the Olden Time." EARLY SURROUNDINGS AND PRIVATIONS II 5 primitive reality; Whittier thought conscience and heart of more importance than all the paraphernalia of planets and of suns. Emerson was influenced by the materialistic philosophy of the English deists, and by the Unitarian reaction from the older Calvinistic theology; Whittier drew his inspiration and his doc- trine from deep personal experience of sin and of re- demption, and from sympathetic observation of the sorrow and guilt of humanity. In short, Emerson be- gan with nature ; Whittier began with man. Emerson interpreted man by nature ; Whittier interpreted nature by man. For this reason there is a prevailing ethical element in Whittier's poetry, which Emerson's almost wholly lacks; the keynote of Whittier's is compassion, while that of Emerson is speculation; Emerson's in- tuitions are the uncertain utterances of his own imper- fect moral being; Whittier's inner light is that of an indwelling and personal God. The poet was born and not made. Yet his sur- roundings had much to do with the unfolding of his genius. The handsome Quaker lad was five feet ten and a half inches tall when he was only fifteen years of age. But life on the Haverhill farm was one of solitude and privation. There were no doors to the barns, and no flannels or overcoats for men ; no buffalo- robes for driving, and no fires in the meeting-house. The milking of seven cows daily, and the threshing of wheat with the flail, overtaxed the boy's strength, and left him a lifelong prey to heart-disease and to in- somnia. It was a rocky and swampy farm. Exposure induced bronchitis. Ill-cooked food gave him the dyspepsia. Yet he learned to read at home; and the Il6 REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD Bible, " Pilgrim's Progress/' and a stray Waverley novel devoured in secret, wakened in him an intense love of literature. " I well remember," he writes, '' how, at a very early age, the solemn organ-roll of Gray's ' Elegy ' and the lyric sweep and pathos of Cowper's * Lament for the Royal George ' moved and fascinated me, with a sense of mystery and power felt rather than understood." His first verses were appar- ently written on the woodwork of his mother's loom; later efforts he committed to a slate; and finally he aspired to an album. His reminiscences of childhood are peculiarly touching. Who can mistake the truth of his picture of '' The Barefoot Boy " ? Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons. And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy, — I was once a barefoot boy! And that same barefoot boy we see depicted as a scholar, in his lines " To My Old Schoolmaster " : I, the urchin unto whom, In that smoked and dingy room. Where the district gave thee rule O'er its ragged winter school, Thou didst teach the mysteries Of those weary A B C's, — Where, to fill the every pause Of thy wise and learned saws. Through the cracked and crazy wall A NATURAL EDITOR II7 Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife. It was one of his crude early poems, " The Exile's Departure," which attracted the attention of William Lloyd Garrison, and led ultimately to their partnership in the work of reform. Without Whittier's knowledge, his sister had sent to the " Free Press " of Newbury- port the manuscript of that poem. Garrison was but little older than Whittier; but, with larger knowledge of the world and of literature, he recognized the promise of its author, and made a journey of fourteen miles to greet him. The father was besought to give his son an education, but at first refused, upon the ground that poetry would not give him bread. His scruples were overruled when the boy learned to make shoes for twenty-five cents the pair and sold them to pay his schooling. So Whittier had two years in the Haverhill Academy. They were years of wide read- ing and of constant literary production, both in prose and in verse. Most of his early work indeed was journalistic. His poetry was thrown off hastily to ex- press some fleeting impulse or to meet some public need. Whittier was a natural editor. Each new event was to him a challenge, and he discussed it in print. It was soon apparent that he had political insight, knowledge of motives, and power to direct public opinion. In his "Tent on the Beach" he describes himself : And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a mission to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill, ii8 Premonitions of coming power Making his rustic reed of song A weapon in the war with wrong, Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow. Too quiet seemed the man to ride The winged Hippogriff Reform; Was his a voice from side to side To pierce the tumult of the storm? A silent, shy, peace-loving man, He seemed no fiery partisan To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down. For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dreamland blew. The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down; Along his task-fi.eld weird processions swept, The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. He had not yet found himself. But vague premoni- tions of coming power and reputation were there to tempt and to attract. In " Moll Pitcher " there was originally a closing stanza, which the poet subse- quently suppressed : Land of my fathers! — if my name, Now humble and unwed to fame, Hereafter burn upon the lip As one of those which may not die. Linked in eternal fellowship With visions pure and strong and high — If the wild dreams, which quicken now The throbbing pulse of heart and brow, Hereafter take a real form THE ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATIOK I19 Like specters changed to being warm; And over temples worn and gray The starlike crown of glory shine, — Thine be the bard's undying lay, The murmur of his praise be thine! And now we come to the turning-point of Whittier's life, to what we must regard as a genuine conversion. Hitherto he had lived with no definite aim beyond his own development and success. Local incidents and legends had furnished subjects for his poems. Political advancement had seemed possible, and he had thought seriously of running for Congress. He was a brilliant editor, and he had formed literary acquaintances of value. He longed to escape from the monotony of farm life, and to make himself felt in public affairs. Then came the anti-slavery agitation and the call of God to espouse the cause of freedom. Garrison sum- moned him to join the abolitionists. It was like joining the anarchists of to-day. We must remember that cotton-growing at the South had made slave-labor profitable and apparently necessary. Northern capital was invested in commerce and manufactures which de- pended on Southern trade. The early acknowledgment of the injustice of slavery was replaced by a defense of the system. Even the Quakers were sometimes un- wilHng to permit anti-slavery discussion in their con- ferences. The whole weight of social, literary, and political influence was on the side of the oppressor. To be an abolitionist was to expose oneself to contempt and ostracism, if not to the violence of the mob. When Garrison sent his ringing appeal to Whittier, acceptance of his invitation meant for our poet the 120 WHlTTlER ALIGNED WITH GARRlSON giving up of all his earthly prospects and consigning himself to lifelong poverty and disgrace. The lines which he addressed to Charles Sumner apply quite as well to himself: God said: " Break thou these yo^kes! undo These heavy burdens! I ordain A work to last thy whole life through, A ministry of strife and pain. " Forego thy dreams- of lettered ea.se, Put thou the scholar's promise by, The rights of man are more than these." He heard and answered: " Here- am I! " Garrison's declaration of principles in the first num- ber of " The Liberator " was as bold as the " Theses " which Luther nailed to the door of the church in Wit- tenberg : *' Unconditional emancipation is the immedi- ate duty of the master, and the immediate right of the slave. . . I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice; I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.'* And Whittier responded to Garrison's appeal : My heart hath leaped to answer thine, And echo back thy words, As leaps the warrior's at the shine And flash of kindred swords! It was no mere burst of youthfuh enthusiasm, but a heroic consecration to duty. For the thirtieth anniver- sary of the Anti-slavery Society he wrote : "I am thankful to divine Providence that turned me so early away from what Roger Williams calls 'the world's great Trinity — pleasure, profit, and honor,' — to take 121 side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to literary reputation; I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good will of my fellow men; but I set a higher value to my name as appended to the Anti- slavery Declaration of 1833, than on the tide-page of any book." And to a boy seeking counsel in after years he said : " My lad, if thou wouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause." This enlistment of Whittier was immediately fol- lowed by service. He printed at his own charges a pamphlet entitled " Justice and Expediency," in which the whole question of slavery was calmly and learnedly considered. Then too began that long succession of fiery and thrilling appeals to the conscience and heart of the North, which made him, more than all other poets combined, a representative of freedom and a power to nerve our people to defend the Union in its struggle with the slaveholding aristocracy: Our fellow-countrymen in chains! Slaves, in a land of light and law! Slaves, crouching on the very plains Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war! What ho! our countrymen in chains! The whip on woman's shrinking flesh! Our soil yet reddening with the stains Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh! What! mothers from their children riven! What! God's own image bought and sold! Americans to market driven, And bartered as the brute for gold! So read his poem, " Expostulation." He paid the penalty. Poetry in those days was no selling com- K 122 " THE BURDEN OF A PROPHET'S POWER " modity. With his mother and sister he lived on little more than five hundred dollars a year — the salary of his editorship. He gave up all thought of marriage, though there is abundant evidence that he longed for wedded companionship. Ill health shut him out from public gatherings and from regular city life. When, he did venture into the field, it was to visit Garrison in the Philadelphia jail where he was confined for calling a slave-dealer a pirate, or to see that same Garrison dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck. The mob broke the windows of the Haverhill church, where Whittier attended an anti- slavery meeting, and he was pelted with stones and~ rotten eggs in Concord. But he says well : The burden of a prophet's power Fell on me in that fearful hour.* Forsaking poetry for humanity, he made both poetry and humanity his own. Now first his art became cos- mopolitan and commanding. Losing his life for Christ's sake, he found it. At the age of twenty-five Whittier was called " a gay young Quaker," though he had " kept his inno- cency." His gaiety was the expression of a sensi- tive and kindly nature. But it was accompanied by a deep indignation against impurity and wrong-doing. " Quaker? " was the reply to one who pointed him out; " he will fight ! " He certainly had fighting blood in his veins, and he explained this by his inheritance from a Norman ancestry. Gail Hamilton worked for him < " Ezekiel." A FIGHTING SPIRIT BUT A NON-RESISTANT 1 23 a pair of slippers with the effigy of an eagle whose claw's grasped thunderbolts. Whittier told her that she was as sharp with her needle as she was with her pen. When it came to the question of our dealings with slavery, it was hard for him to repress his belligerent instincts. Yet his peace principles made him a non- resistant. He admired John Brown, but he disap- proved of his methods. He refused to accept a pike which was sent him as a memento of John Brown's raid, saying, " It is not a Christian weapon : it looks too much like murder." Though his poetry had done much to infuse the fighting spirit into others, he would have let the Southern States go, rather than subdue them by force of arms. He would have paid slave- holders for their slaves, but he scorned to catch their fugitives. When our Civil War broke out, he looked on in sorrow, and waited for God to determine the result. Yet his sympathies were all with our Union army, and he could not hide from himself the convic- tion that in some great crises of history war is inevit- able. His poem entitled " Italy," indeed, makes it plain that war is sometimes God's messenger: I know the pent fire heaves its crust, That sultry skies the bolt will form To smite them clear; that Nature must The balance of her powers adjust, Though with the earthquake and the storm. God reigns, and let the earth rejoice! I bow before His sterner plan. Dumb are the organs of my choice; He speaks in battle's stormy voice, His praise is in the wrath of man! 124 WHITTIER S DIFFERENCES WITH GARRISON Whittier was more sane and practical than Garrison. He was more unselfish, and he had more of tact and skill. Garrison was dictatorial, and unwilling to take any subordinate position. Wliittier was willing to humble himself for the sake of the cause. Was the Bible against anti-slavery? then Garrison declared the Bible to be wrong; did the church oppose? then the church must be reformed ; did the Constitution forbid ? then the Constitution must be destroyed; was the Union impossible with slavery abolished? then death to the Union ! Garrison called the Constitution '' a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell," and he demanded that it be immediately annulled. He would not vote, and he renounced all allegiance to a government which was in league with slavery. Whittier, on the other hand, yielded in smaller mat- ters, that he might win in the greater. He remained a voting Quaker. So there ensued a division between these friends, which lasted for years and which greatly intensified Whittier's loneliness and suffering. Yet reconciliation came at last, and each respected the independence of the other. Each had struck his honest blow, and slavery was no more. Whittier nobly com- memorates Garrison's service in the verses written after his death: The storm and peril overpast, The hounding hatred shamed and still, Go, soul of freedom! take at last The place which thou alone canst fill. Confirm the lesson taught of old — Life saved for self is lost, while they Who lose it in His service hold The lease of God's eternal day. 125 "Forget, forgive, and unite," were the words of wisdom written by our poet to the meeting held by his fellow townsmen to consider the outrage done to Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber of the United States. That advice represents the spirit of Whittier's life. Garrison held that " it is a waste of politeness to be courteous to the Devil." Whittier would, by fair means, make even the Evil One to serve the cause of righteousness. He was a good politician, and an expert lobbyist. His influence was both courted and feared, for he could not only warn but rebuke. Caleb Cushing met defeat when he failed to take Whittier's advice and resist the aggressions of slavery. And in all literature there is no more scathing fulmination than his " Ichabod," when Daniel Webster turned his back upon his patriotic past and strove to curry favor with the South by crowding upon the North the in- famous Fugitive Slave Law : So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! 126 " THE LOST OCCASION " Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naug-ht Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled: • When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze. And hide the shame! But when the great man strove to drown remorse in deep potations, lost his hold upon the country and upon himself, and died despondent, Whittier's heart went out toward him in compassion, and he wrote " The Lost Occasion " : Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill of evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills. EARLY FAULTS OF WHITTIER S VERSE 12J Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy august head. Thou shouldst have lived to feel below Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; The late-sprung mine that underlaid Thy sad concessions vainly made. No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee The gates of opportunity! Poe and Lanier devoted themselves to the mecha- nism of verse. Art did more for them than nature. Whittier thought more of substance than of form. He had many defects of ear and of training. His hearing was imperfect, and he was color-blind. His early poems were little more than jingling common- place. He became conscious of their imperfections. He said facetiously that he would like to drown many- of them like so many unlikely kittens, and as for " Mogg Megone," he would like to kill him over again, for he now suggested to him "a big Indian in his war-paint, strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." This judgment was very just. Stedman says well that only what was written after the year i860 has won a 128 whittier's financial success national reputation. Before that time his writing was hasty and aimed at immediate effect. Faults of rhyme were frequent and glaring. But practice and reading proved to be an education. After the stress of anti- slavery agitation was over, he became connected with the " Atlantic Monthly," and accepted the criticisms of its editors. " I hope," he writes to them, " I am cor- recting a little of the bad grammar and rhythmical blunders which have so long annoyed Harvard gradu- ates." And the quality of his verse greatly improved in his later years. Its simplicity and intensity com- mended it to common people. " Snow-Bound " and " The Tent on the Beach " were accepted by thousands as the most characteristic poems that our country had yet produced. And from the time of their publica- tion Whittier was free from financial care. " Snow- Bound " gave him ten thousand dollars for its first edition. Of " The Tent on the Beach " twenty thou- sand copies were sold. The poet could not understand his own success. " The swindle is awful," he writes ; " Barnum is a saint to me. I am bowed down with a sense of guilt, ashamed to look an honest man in the face." But the " Proem," which he wrote to introduce the first general collection of his poems, expresses more seriously and faultlessly the feeling with which he welcomed the first signs of public favor and the first evidence that his work had real value : I love the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PUBLIC ESTEEM 1 29 Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvelous notes I try; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or' Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense. And hearty in its vehemence. As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine. Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine! " Upon the occasion of my seventieth birthday, in 1877," he writes : I was the recipient of many tokens of esteem. The pub- lishers of the " Atlantic Monthly " gave a dinner in my name, and the editor of " The Literary World " gathered in his paper many affectionate messages from my associates in literature and the cause of human progress. The line.s which follow were written in acknowledgment. Beside that milestone where the level sun, Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays On word and work irrevocably done, Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise. 130 FAITH IN EVANGELICAL TRUTH Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise I see my life-work through your partial eyes; Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs A higher value than of right belongs, You do but read between the written lines The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. II Religion is the foundation of theology, and, with- out heart, intellect will go astray. Whittier was a deeply religious man. His poetry had always a re- ligious motive. But the religious element in it does not always take doctrinal form ; to discover it we must sometimes look beneath the surface. It is well that we have his prose to interpret his poetry. His '' Life and Letters," edited by Samuel T. Picard, furnishes an ad- mirable commentary upon his verse, and enables us to a large extent to understand his theological views. It must not be expected that a member of the Society of Friends will give us elaborated dogmas — that would contravene the traditions of a sect which makes little of form, but much of the spirit. But we can find in Whittier's poems, as interpreted by his letters, an un- mistakable faith in evangelical truth, and the deter- mination to witness for that truth in his writing and in his life. The breadth and sincerity of his faith is proved by the fact that his hymns are sung in public worship by all bodies of Christians, while they are cherished by many thousands as sources of private A MAN OF THE ONE BOOK I3I cheer and consolation. No modern poet has done more to comfort the sorrowing, or to calm the passions of our restless age. Whittier can do this, because the peace of God is in his own heart. He was a man of one book, and that one book was the Bible. When Edmund Gosse visited him, he was struck by the meagerness of Whittier's library. But he knew the Scriptures by heart. They were not to him the sole authority in Christian faith, for they needed to be interpreted by the Spirit. But when hu- man reason failed, Scripture was his guide, and fal- lible impulses were corrected by its superior wisdom. He writes of " The Book " : Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old. Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! But only when on forni and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, Until we pause at last, awe-held, before The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. And in his poem " The Word " he describes the inner voice, without which all external revelation becomes as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics of Egypt : Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none! 132 BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD By thee the mystery of life is read; The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, The myths and parables of the primal years, Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, And in the soul's vernacular express The common law of simple righteousness. Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds May well be felt: the unpardonable sin Is to deny the Word of God within! The God in whose revelation he believed is a per- sonal God. It might almost seem as if he had Emer- son in mind when, in his *' Questions of Life," he wrote : In vain to me the Sphinx propounds The riddle of her sights and sounds; Back still the vaulted mystery gives The echoed question it receives. I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme. Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream Of power, impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled. Maker and slave of iron laws. Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still. Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery. Art, And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal Beauty new and old! Nature to him is no blind guide. Winnepiseogee is " the mirror of God's love " : NATURE S TESTIMONY TO GOD 1 33 Touched by a light that hath no name, Are God's great pictures hung.° So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, Of old, the Indian trod, And, through the sunset air, looked down Upon the Smile of God. To him of light and shade the laws No forest skeptic taught; Their living and eternal Cause His truer instinct sought. Thanks, O our Father! that, like him, Thy tender love I see, In radiant hill and woodland dim, And tinted sunset sea. For not in mockery dost Thou fill Our earth with light and grace; Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will Behind thy smiling face.® The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling. Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all His works, Hath left His hope with all!' The harp at Nature's advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. So Nature keeps the reverent frame With which her years began. And all her signs and voices shame The prayerless heart of man.^ " " Sunset on the Bearcamp," ^ " The Lakeside." ' " A Dream of Summer." « «« The Worship of Nature. t34 god's justice disciplinary Whittier's anti-slavery poems show that he be- heved in a God of justice, who makes suffering to follow upon sin. " Ein Feste Burg 1st Unser Gott " is a hymn worthy to be compared with that of Luther : We wait beneath the furnace-blast The pangs of transformation; Not painlessly doth God recast And mould anew the nation. Hot burns the fire Where wrongs expire; Nor spares the hand That from the land Uproots the ancient evil. But he believed that God's justice is one with his love, and that penalty is always disciplinary and remedial. In '' Barclay of Ury " he writes : Not in vain, Confessor old, Unto us the tale is told Of thy day of trial; Every age on him who strays From its broad and beaten ways Pours its seven-fold vial. Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And while Hatred's fagots burn, ' Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. The dread Ineffable Glory Was Infinite Goodness alone.® " Among the Hills " gives a noble picture of the true relation between the two great attributes of God : » " The Minister's Daughter." DIVINE JUSTICE ONE WITH LOVE t^S Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide Between the right and wrong; but give the heart The freedom of its fair inheritance: Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great purpose of creation, Love, The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven! Proving in a world of bliss What we fondly dream in this, — Love is one with holiness !^° Rejoice in hope! The day and night Are one with God, and one with them Who see by faith the cloudy hem . Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light!" " At Eventide " sums up the blessings of the past, and chief, The kind restraining hand of Providence, The inward witness, the assuring sense Of an Eternal Good which overlies The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives All sin and wrong. Compassion which forgives To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes Through lapse and failure look to the intent. And judge our frailty by the life we meant. i« " In Memory." " " Astraea at the Capitol." 136 THE TEST OF THEOLOGY THE VIEW OF SIN '* My Trust " illustrates God's dealing with our errors and sins, by the kind restraint with which a mother trains her child : A picture memory brings to me: I look across the years and see •Myself beside my mother's knee. I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He. I suffer with no vain pretence Of triumph over flesh and sense, Yet trust the grievous providence, How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, By ways I cannot comprehend, To some ungue.ssed benignant end; That every loss and lapse may gain The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, And never cross is borne in vain. The test of a poet's theology is his view of sin. If he ignores or condones sin, he shows that he has only a superficial conception of human nature, and is an un- trustworthy moral guide. Sin is the one blot upon this fair world, the one sorrow and shame over which angels weep. But excusing sin or glorying in it is so much a matter of pride, that the poet's readiest path to popularity is that of catering to unconscientious self-esteem. When Swinburne follows natural im- pulses in his " Laus Veneris," it is corrupted nature that he follows. Only the Spirit of God can rectify these impulses and correct man's view. Of all our WHITTIER S CONVICTION OF SIN 1 37 American poets Whittier is the most sane and true, be- cause at the basis of his poetry there is genuine con- viction of sin. Like John Woolman, he had " felt the depth and extent of the misery of his fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony — and he was mixed with them and henceforth might not consider himself a distinct and separate being." Like Wool- man, he could feel for the sins of others because he had first felt the evil of sin in his own heart. " It was in no mocking humility," he savs, " that I wrote in * Andrew Rykman ' " : I, who hear with secret shame Praise that paineth more than blame, Rich alone in favors lent, Virtuous by accident, Doubtful where I fain would rest, Frailest where I seem the best, Only strong for lack of test. My mind has been a good deal exercised of late on the subject of religious obligation. The prayer of Cowper is sometimes in my mind: "Oh, for a closer walk with God!" I feel that there are many things of the world between me and the realization of a quiet communion with the pure and Holy Spirit. Alas for human nature in its best estate! There is no upward tendency in it. It looks downward. It is, in- deed, of the earth. . . I know my own weakness and frailty, and I am humbled rather than exalted by homage which I do not deserve. As the swift years pass, the eternal Realities seem taking the place of the shadows and illusions of time. In his later years he writes : The unescapable sense of sin in thought and deed makes the boldest of us cowards. I believe in God as Justice, Goodness, Tenderness — in one word, Love — and yet my trust in him is not strong enough to overcome the natural shrinking from L 138 TRUST IN THE ALL-MERCIFUL the law of death. Even our Master prayed that, if it were possible, the cup might pass from him. . . I have to lament over protracted seasons of doubt and darkness, to shrink back from the discovery of some latent unfaithfulness and insin- cerity, to find evil at the bottom of seeming good, to abhor myself for selfishness and pride and vanity, which at times manifest themselves — in short, to find the law of sin and death still binding me. My temperament, ardent, impetuous, imaginative, powerfully acted upon from without, keenly sus- ceptible to all influences from the intellectual world as well as to those of nature in her varied manifestations, is, I fear, ill adapted to that quiet, introverted state of patient and passive waiting for direction and support under these trials and diffi- culties. He felt impelled to express his trust in the mercy of the All-Merciful, " yet with a solemn recognition of the awful consequences of alienation from Him, and a full realization of the truth that sin and suffer- ing are inseparable." These quotations from his letters enable us to under- stand the more condensed expressions of his poems. "What the Voice Said" is significant: " Know'st thou not all germs of evil In thy heart await their time? Not thyself, but God's restraining. Stays their growth of crime. " Earnest words must needs be spoken When the warm heart bleeds or burns With its scorn of wrong, or pity For the wronged, by turns. " But, by all thy nature's weakness. Hidden faults and follies known, Be thou, in rebuking evil, Conscious of thine own! " THE LOVE ETERNAL 139 " My Namesake " might well be a portrait of Whittier himself : " While others trod the altar stairs He faltered like the publican; And, while they praised as saints, his prayers Were those of sinful man. " For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, The trembling faith alone sufficed, That, through its cloud and flame, he saw The sweet, sad face of Christ!" And it is in Christ alone that he puts his trust either for himself or for the world of sinners: " Blind must be their close-shut eyes Where like night the sunshine lies, Fiery-linked the self-forged chain Binding ever sin to pain. Strong their prison-house of will, But without He waiteth still. " Not with hatred's undertow Doth the Love Eternal flow; Every chain that spirits wear Crumbles in the breath of prayer; And the penitent's desire Opens every gate of fire. *' Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach these souls in prison! Through all depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of Thy cross! Never yet abyss was found Deeper than that cross could sound !"^^ And here is a fragment, found among his papers, in his handwriting, evidently belonging to some poem he never finished: " " The Grave by the Lake." 140 WHITTIER S VIEW OF CHRIST The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, The pain of wounds which Thou alone canst heal, To whom our weakness is our strong appeal. From the black depths, the ashes, and the dross Of our waste lives, we reach out to Thy cross, And by its fullness measure all our loss! That holy sign reveals Thee: throned above No Moloch sits, no false, vindictive Jove — Thou art our Father, and Thy name is Love! Whittier declares that he has become convinced of the Divinity of Christ, but he adds: '' I cannot look on him as other than a man like ourselves, through v^hom the Divine was made miraculously manifest. Jesus of Nazareth was a man, the Christ was a God — a new revelation of the Eternal in time." But he also speaks of Christ as " Immanuel, God with us. God is one," he said ; " Christ is the same Eternal One, mani- fested in our humanity, and in time; the Holy Spirit is the same Christ manifested within us." No reason- able Trinitarian can object to this latter statement, and by it we must interpret the statement that goes before. In the earlier declaration he is only solicitous to guard our Lord's perfect humanity; in the latter he asserts that this humanity is divine; in other words, that Jesus is the Christ. Though his declaration does not define the relations of the Three, nor even call them persons, it is not a Unitarian statement. It may be Sabellian, but it recognizes at least the Deity of Christ, and gives him supreme place in affection and service. Only once does our poet struggle with the mystery of the Trinity, and the solution which he gives is not a speculative, but a practical one: % A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE TRINITY I4I At morn I prayed, " I fain would see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me." In vain I turned, in weary quest, Old pages, where (God give them rest!) The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed. Then something whispered, " Dost thou pray For what thou hast? This very day The Holy Three have crossed thy way. " Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare The all-compassionate Father's care? *' In the white soul that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways, Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise! "A bodiless Divinity, The still small Voice that spake to thee Was the Holy Spirit's mystery! "The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul; — and the Three are One! " And my heart answered, " Lord, I see How Three are One, and One is Three; Thy riddle hath been read to me!" It may be doubted whether this solution fully an- swers the demands of Scripture. We have there a recognition of personal relations of the Father to the Son, and of the Son to the Spirit, which go beyond the terms of Whittier's statement. But all that is 142 ACCEPTANCE OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICE positive in his utterance we may accept with glad- ness, only adding that there is a yet larger truth which he had not perceived. Enough for our present purpose that he depended on Christ alone for salva- tion, in this world and in the world to come. " I am no Calvinist," he says. But I feel in looking over my life — double-motived and full of failures — that I cannot rely upon word or work of mine to offset sins and shortcomings, but upon Love alone. . . Alas, if I have been a servant at all, I have been an un- profitable one; and yet I have loved goodness, and have longed to bring my imaginative poetic temperament into true subjection. I stand ashamed and almost despairing before holy and pure ideals. As I read the New Testament I feel how weak, irresolute, and frail I am, and how little I can rely on anything save our God's mercy and infinite compassion, which I reverently and thankfully own have followed me through life, and the assurance of which is my sole ground of hope for myself, and for those I love and pray for. He repudiated every moral and religious scheme which makes man sufficient to himself. Neither Stoi- cism nor Epicureanism could satisfy his needs. " I am more and more astonished," he writes, That such a man as Confucius could have made his appear- ance amidst the dull and dreary commonplaces of his people. No wiser soul ever spoke of right and duty, but his maxims have no divine sanction, and his pictures of a perfect so- ciety have no perspectives opening to eternity. Our Doctor Franklin was quite of the Confucius order — though a very much smaller man. . . I cannot help believing in prayer for spiritual things. Being fully possessed of Christ, then it is he that prays. And his poem " The Crucifixion " shows his accept- ance of the outward sacrifice offered in his behalf, as " THE CRUCIFIXION I43 well as of the inward renewal and help of Christ's Spirit : That Sacrifice!— the death of Him,— The Christ of God, the Holy One! Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, And blacken the beholding Sun! Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, And shadows veil the Cherubim, When He, the chosen, one of Heaven, A sacrifice for guilt is given! And shall the sinful heart, alone, Behold unmoved the fearful hour, When Nature trembled on her throne, And Death resigned his iron power? Oh, shall the heart — whose sinfulness Gave keenness to His sore distress, And added to His tears of blood — Refuse its trembling gratitude? There was a time when Orthodox Quakers were shy of publicly joining with abolitionists. This threw Whittier in with the Hicksites, though he belonged to the Orthodox. He felt that a sound belief required sound practice, and in remonstrating with his brethren, he took occasion to draw from that belief an argu- ment for duty. " What will it avail us," he writes, If, while boasting of our soundness and of our enmity to the delusion of Hicksism, we neglect to make a practical application of our belief to ourselves? if we neglect to seek for ourselves that precious atonement which we are so ready to argue in favor of? I do not undervalue a sound belief, but at the same time I believe it may be " held " in unrighteousness. I do not dare to claim to be any the better for my orthodox principles. The mercy of God is my only hope. 144 His poem " The Over-Heart " seems like a reply to Emerson's too intellectual doctrines of the Over- Soul, and to his overstatement of man's independence : The world sits at the feet of Christ, Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold. To a young physician, with Dore's picture of Christ healing the sick, he sent his poem, " The Healer " : So stood of old the holy Christ Amidst the suffering throng; With whom His lightest touch sufficed To make the weakest strong. That healing gift He lends to them Who use it in His name; The power that filled His garment's hem Is evermore the same. That Good Physician liveth yet Thy friend and guide to be; The Healer by Gennesaret Shall walk the rounds with thee. " Our Master " is a confession of faith in Christ which has passed into the hymnology of all the churches: Immortal Love, forever full. Forever flowing free, Forever shared, forever whole, A never-ebbing sea! Our outward lips confess the name All other names above; Love only knoweth whence it came And comprehendeth love. WHITTIER NOT FAR FROM CALVINISM 1 45 We may not climb the heavenly steeps To bring the Lord Christ down: In vain we search the lowest deeps, For Him no depths can drown. But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. The healing of His seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again. Through Him the first fond prayers are said Our lips of childhood frame, The last low whispers of our dead Are burdened with His naime. Our Lord and Master of us all! Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. " There is something in the doctrine of total de- pravity and regeneration," Whittier wrote. He was not so far away from Calvinism as he thought. " We are born selfish," he continues. " The discipline of life develops the higher qualities of character, in a greater or less degree. It is the conquering of in- nate selfish propensities that makes the saint; and the giving up unduly to impulses that in their origin are necessary to the preservation of life that makes the sinner." He believed that, as heavenly mercy has provided the sacrifice for sin, so heavenly power must make the sinner willing to accept it. " Between the Gates " represents a younger pilgrim as seeking from 146 FAITH IN THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS an older a help that can come alone from God. But the elder pilgrim answers : " Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift; No power is mine," the sage replied, "The burden of a soul to lift Or stain of sin to hide. " Howe'er the outward life may seem, For pardoning grace we all must pray; No man his brother can redeem Or a soul's ransom pay. " With deeper voice than any speech Of mortal lips from man to man, What earth's unwisdom may not teach The Spirit only can." " How much of sin and want and pain there is in the world ! " so he writes. " I wonder if it is all neces- sary — if it cannot be helped. The terrible mystery sometimes oppresses me, but I hold fast my faith in God's goodness, and the ultimate triumph of that goodness." What to thee is shadow, to Him is day. And the end He knoweth. And not on a blind and aimless way The spirit goeth. Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of Faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The rock beneath. Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will, And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness Life's task fulfil; WHITTIER NOT A UNIVERSALIST I47 And that cloud itself, which now before thee Lies dark in view, Shall with beams of light from the inner glory Be stricken through/^ To a letter from an inquiring friend Whittier re- plied : I am not a Universalist, for I believe in the possibility of the perpetual loss of the soul that persistently turns away from God, in the next life as in this. But I do believe that the divine love and compassion follow us in all worlds, and that the heavenly Father will do the best that is possible for every creature that he has made. What that will be, must be left to his infinite wisdom and goodness. I would refer thee to a poem of mine, " The Answer," as containing in a few words my belief in this matter. And these are his words : " Though God be good and free be heaven. No force divine can love compel; \nd, though the song of sins forgiven May sound through lowest hell, " The sweet persuasion of His voice Respects thy sanctity of will. He giveth day: thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still. " Forever round the Mercy-seat The guiding lights of Love shall burn; But what if, habit-bound, thy feet Shall lack the will to turn? " What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail. And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thy own dark jail? " " My Sotil and I." 148 " THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL " " The Vision of Ecliard " shows, however, that it was no outward punishment, but rather inward suffering, that he feared for the lost: " The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, Are with yourselves alone." But he still had hope for all men. He believed that the same inward voice that spoke to him speaks also to men of every Christian sect and even to the heathen. That voice is the voice of Christ, and he who trusts it and obeys is saved : All souls that struggle and aspire, All hearts of prayer by thee .are lit; And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our need thy favors fall; The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all." "All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear None from that Presence which is everywhere, Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. " Through sins of sense, perversities of will. Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. "Wilt Thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal! In Thy long years, "-life's broken circle whole, And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?"^° Whittier's firm faith in personal immortality has made his poems a treasure of comfort to the bereaved " " The Shadow and the Light." ^« " The Cry of a Lost Soul." FAITH IN PERSONAL IMMORTALITY I49 and sorrowing. *' Emerson once said to me," he writes, "If there is a future life for us, it is well; if there is not, it is well also." For myself, I trust in the mercy of the All- Merciful. What is best for us we shall have, and Life and Love are best. . . What a brief and sad life this of ours would be, if it did not include the possibility of a love that takes hold of eternity! . . There is no great use in arguing the question of immortality; one must feel its truth; you cannot climb into heaven on a syllogism. . . There are some self-satisfied souls who, as Charles Lamb says, " can stalk into futurity on stilts"; but there are more Fearings and Despondencys than Greathearts, in view of the " loss of all we know." . . I think my loved ones are still living and await- ing me. And I wait and trust. And yet how glad and grate- ful I should be to know. . . I have the instinct of immor- tality, but the conditions of that life are unknown. I can- not conceive what my own identity and that of dear ones gone will be. . . Yet I believe that I shall have the same friends in that other world that I have here, the same loves and aspirations and occupations. And in his eightieth year he writes : " The great ques- tion of the Future Life is almost ?ver with me. I can- not answer it, but I can trust." His biographer tells us that there was not a shadow of doubt in his mind concerning the immortaHty of the soul; and that one day, when speaking of his own hope and ex- pectation for the life to come, he sadly said : " I wish Emerson could have believed this." " It saddened him to feel that one whom he so deeply loved and revered had not been sustained by this most passion- ate longing of our human nature." In the summer of 1882, Whittier wrote the fol- lowing lines on the fly-leaf of a volume of Longfel- low's poems: ISO Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue Of him whose lyre the Muses strung; His last low swan-song has been sung! His last! And ours, dear friend, is near; As clouds that rake the mountains here, We too shall pass and disappear. Yet howsoever changed or tost, Not even a wreath of mist is lost, No atom can itself exhaust. So shall the soul's superior force Live on and run its endless course In God's unlimited universe. And we, whose brief reflections seem To fade like clouds from lake and stream, Shall brighten in a holier beam. In " Snow-Bound," our poet touchingly records the family group that circled round the hearth of early days, and wonders where the dear members of that household now are : O Time and Change! — with hair as gray- As was my sire's that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of life and love, to still live on! Ah, brother! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now, — The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will. The voices of that hearth are still; Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn. We sit beneath their orchard trees, We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn; A GENIUS RUSTIC AND HOMELY I5I We turn the pages that they read, Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees! Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own! If Whittier had written no other poem than this, he would have earned immortality as a poet. Not by his worst, but by his best, must the poet be judged. The defects of Whittier's poetry are easy to perceive and easy to criticize. His genius was rustic and homely; he never learned compression; he spun out his verse after the divine afflatus had ceased; he moralized when he should have left his story to tell its own lesson. But all this is only to say that he regarded poetry as a means, rather than as an end, and that he sought always to serve truth and righteousness there- by. There can be no more striking contrast in this respect than that between him and Goethe. Art for art's sake was to Whittier a prostitution of genius. " A long poem," he said, " unconsecrated to religion and humanity, would be a criminal waste of life." He aimed to fulfil Paul's injunction to do all to the glory of God, and the glory of God meant for him the good 152 A NATURAL BALLADIST of man. So he has been called " the Quaker priest " ; and much of his poetry is little more than rhythmical preaching. But it came from the heart, and it touched the heart. It was the utterance of an uncorrupted conscience, and it stirred the conscience. When Lowell was a callow youth, and Longfellow was absorbed in his books, and Emerson was wrapped in philosophic clouds, Whittier alone gave himself body and soul to the cause of freedom, and compelled all the rest to fol- low. More than all other poets combined he roused our people to see the evil of slavery and at unspeakable cost to abolish it. He was a natural balladist. His poetry was simple and direct, like that of Burns; his. prose had the lofty swell and exuberance of Milton. Indian legends at- tracted him, but he never mastered the improvidence of that dying race, as did Longfellow; the wit and humor of New England did not impress him as it im- pressed Lowell. But the courage of a humble soul was never more thrillingly described than in " Barbara Frietchie," nor the pathos of life more touchingly than in that ballad of " Maud Muller," in which the New England Judge and the village maid meet for one moment and part to see each other again only as memory makes recall : Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: " It might have been! " REWARDS FOR SERVICE AND SACRIFICE 1 53 Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes; And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away! We have had no poet more truly Christian, none who laid his gifts more completely at the feet of Christ, none who more completely identified himself with the suffering and oppressed. His life of sacrifice was not permitted to go unrewarded. After twenty years of privation, in which he was regarded as a mere rhymester and reformer, the world began to perceive that he was a true poet, and that his homely verse was most truly American. Not only the friendship of the learned and the good, but an unexpected prosperity and comfort, crowned his latter days. The promise of " manifold more in this present time " was ful- filled to him. On his eightieth birthday he was pre- sented with a portfolio containing hundreds of auto- graphs of Massachusetts officials, the signatures of " fifty-nine United States Senators, the entire bench of the Supreme Court of the United States headed by Chief Justice Waite, Speaker Carlisle of the House of Representatives, and three hundred and thirty mem- bers of the House coming from every State and Ter- ritory in the Union. To these were added the names of many private citizens of distinction, such as George Bancroft, Robert C. Winthrop, James G. Blaine, and Frederick Douglass." This portfolio only feebly ex- pressed the affection in which he was held by the whole American people, and their gratitude for his influence and example. Like Abraham Lincoln, he was a man M 154 of the people, and a man for the hour. He was hon- ored because he had served. Whittier Hved to be eighty-five years of age. Bachelor as he was, he was tenderly cared for by relatives and friends, and his last days were quiet and restful. His hymn entitled " The Eternal Good- ness " is a confession of faith which has comforted many of the afflicted : I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God hath led my dear ones on, And He can do no wrong. I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave. And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea, I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. " THE BREWING OF SOMA " 1 55 " The end of that man was peace." His poem " The Brewing of Soma " gives his prescription for all earthly care and trouble : Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise. In simple trust like theirs who heard Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above. Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love! Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm! " My Psalm " is a yet more convincing assurance of his freedom from anxiety with regard to his own future or the future of the world : I mourn no more my vanished years: Beneath a tender rain, An April rain of smiles and tears, My heart is young again. 156 The west winds blow, and, singing low, I hear the glad streams run; The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun. No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But, grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here. All as God wills, who wisely heeds To give or to withhold, And knoweth more of all my needs Than all my prayers have told! Enough that blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track; That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned me back; That more and more a Providence Of love is understood. Making the springs of time and sense Sweet with eternal good; — That death seems but a covered way Which opens into light, Wherein no blinded child can stray Beyond the Father's sight; That care and trial seem at last, Through Memory's sunset air, Like mountain ranges overpast. In purple distance fair; That all the jarring notes of life Seem blending in a psalm, And all the angles of its strife Slow rounding into calm. And so the shadows fall apart. And so the west winds play; And all the windows of my heart I open to the day. THE HUMBLE FRIEND OF GOD I57 Whittier illustrates Augustine's doctrine that humil- ity is the "fundamental grace of the Christian character. Humility is no mere self-depreciation; it is a coming down to the humu^, or hard-pan, of actual fact; it is the estimate of self according to the divine standard, which is nothing less than absolute conformity to the character of God. When we compare ourselves with one another, we may be proud ; when we compare our- selves with infinite purity and benevolence, we must be humble. Humility is the indispensable condition of religious knowledge, for only the childlike spirit can understand God; it is the condition of all spiritual power, for only the receptive soul can be the medium of divine revelation. The secret of Whittier's life and work was his humble faith in God. " I believe in a living God," he said. That is the quintessence of Quakerism. " The Friends " took that name because they were first of all God's friends, and then for God's sake had become friends to suffering and sinning men. Our poet had learned that God is not far away, but a present God, a God here and now, a God recon- ciled to men through the infinite sacrifice of his only begotten Son, a God who reveals himself to the con- trite spirit by an inner voice, condensing into a moment his works of power, and making his servants mighty to do and to endure. It is this humble faith of Whittier that has conquered criticism, has made " Snow- Bound " more popular than Oliver Goldsmith's " De- serted Village," or Robert Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Night," and has given his poetry, in spite of its defects of rhyme and of compression, an imperishable fame. In the last of his poems, written but a few weeks be- 158 A BLAMELESS MEMORY IN DEATHLESS SONG fore his death, and addressed " To Oliver Wendell Holmes," he sums up this faith of his life : ' The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, When at the Eternal Gate We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that Gate no toll; Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives. And live, because He lives. And I cannot better close my essay than by quoting the words which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in memory of his friend : " For thee, dear friend, there needs no high-wrought lay. To shed its aureole round thy cherished name, — Thou whose plain, home-born speech of Yea and Nay Thy truthful nature ever best became. " Best loved and saintliest of our singing train. Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong. A lifelong record closed without a stain, A blameless memory, shrined in deathless song.' IV EDGAR ALLAN POE EDGAR ALLAN POE In passing from Whittier to Poe, we learn how wide is the realm of poetry. To use Sir William Hamil- ton's phrase, the two poets are separated by " the whole diameter of being." Yet the contrast is not abso- lute ; " being " connects the two ; each of them depicts life. If we note the differences, we perceive that Whit- tier is the most American of our poets, while Poe is well-nigh devoid of national characteristics. Whittier is the poet of plain country life; Poe is airily aristo- cratic, and is at home only in the town. Whittier grew up amid the hardships of a New England farm and the rude lessons of a New England schoolhouse; Poe was the spoiled child of a Southern household, gained in England his introduction to the classics, and had some part of his training in the University of Virginia and in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Whittier was a devotee of duty ; Poe was a devotee of beauty. Whittier made his poetry a lifelong protest against slavery; Poe ignored all moral issues, and re- garded all reformers as madmen. Whittier was a man of faith, looked upon conscience as the voice of God, saw the future lit up by God's love and God's prom- ises, and so, held to an optimistic view of the universe and to an unwavering assurance of immortal life; Poe was a soured and self-willed unbeliever, esteeming the Bible to be mere rigmarole and the world to be an i6i 1 62 POE CONTRASTED WITH WHITTIER automatic process from nothingness to nothingness; a victim of uncontrolled appetites which alternately crazed and tormented him, but without God and with- out hope either for this world or for the world to come ; in short, a poet already in hell and singing only of despair. These are the points of difference. Yet Poe, as well as Whittier, was a poet. In certain respects he was more highly endowed. His range was narrower, but within that range there was more of imagination; he had the critical instinct, which Whittier lacked, and he was our first master of the technique of poetry ; above all, he was a melodist, the music of whose verse, like that of Shelley, lulled the senses.^ While Whittier was immensurably the superior in the breadth and substance of his utterance, Poe was the superior in form. In the early day when pretentious mediocrity crowded the stage, Poe both by example and by pre- cept gave direction to our literary ventures, made dog- gerel contemptible, and set a new and better standard of poetical success. That his work was not in vain is proved by the fact that some European judges, espe- cially among the French, have called him our greatest American poet. It is the purpose of this essay to expand and to jus- tify these statements with regard to Poe, and I can best begin by briefly sketching his life. It was the pitiful and tragic life of a genius consumed by vanity and enslaved by drink. I would be gentle in my judg- * In many ways the short life, early excesses and insanity, small poet- ical product and melodious elaboration of abstract and ideal qualities of William Collins (1721-1759) furnish a remarkable analogy to the life and work of Poe. AGREEMENT AMONG BIOGRAPHERS 163 merits, but I would be truthful also. Let us remember that Poe made Rufus Wilmot Griswold his literary- executor, and trusted him as his biographer. Griswold was the most capable compiler of his day. He was nearest to the scenes, and was most familiar with the facts of Poe's life. His story was so damaging to the poet's reputation that later writers attributed its dark colors to personal animosity. The half century that has followed, however, although it has witnessed the discovery of new material, has invalidated no essential of Griswold's conclusions. The " Life of Edgar Allan Poe," by Prof. George E. Woodberry, printed in 1909, the hundredth year after Poe's birth, is a most complete and thorough resume of all that is really known about Poe's history, and in all substantial mat- ters it concedes the justice of Griswold's earlier judg- ments. It is a calmer and tenderer review than Gris- wold's, and the sad truth is for the most part left to tell its own story. But " the archangel ruined " is none the less visible, for lack of the biographer's de- nunciation. Poe's grandfather, David, was a stalwart Irish im- migrant, who settled in Philadelphia. He loved free- dom and hated England. He was one of the patriots of our Revolution, and a quartermaster in our Con- tinental Army. General Poe, as he was called, was so proud and prosperous that, when his son David, our poet's father, married an actress and became him- self an actor, the general disinherited him and turned him adrift. Three children were born of this union, of whom Edgar was the second. The parents led the itinerant and obscure life of second-rate players. 164 EARLY TRAINING OF POE Of the father's end nothing is known. But the mother, after pitiful struggles with poverty and appeals for public sympathy, died in Richmond, Virginia, leaving her children in utter destitution. The heart of the grandfather was apparently touched by their need, for he took the elder son, William, under his care. Rosalie, the youngest child, found a home with a family named Mackenzie. Mr. John Allan, a Richmond to- bacco-merchant of Scottish birth, and his young wife, who was childless, had pity for Edgar, the beautiful two-year-old orphan boy, and, without adopting him, treated him in almost all respects as their son and heir. It might have seemed that the boy's fortune was made. He entered a home of comfort and even of luxury; he became the pet and admiration of the household; pony and dogs enlivened his hours of rec- reation; while under various teachers he learned to read, to draw, to declaim, and to dance. He was an apt scholar, though impulsive and dreamy. He had inherited the histrionic temperament and he. delighted in exhibiting his talents. Mr. Allan most unwisely entertained his friends at dinner by lifting the little boy with his curly locks to a chair, upon which he stood while he held his glass of wine, recited his verses, and drank to the health of the company. He was subjected to no real government; his pranks and his caprices were matters of amusement; Southern hospitality did little to correct his natural pride and selfishness; he tells us, indeed, that he " was left to the guidance of his own will." The most peaceful, and perhaps the happiest, time of his life was the lustrum which he spent at Stoke- A LUSTRUM IN ENGLAND ,165 Newington, near London, under the rigorous tutelage of Doctor Bransby. Mr. Allan made a long visit of five years in England, and Edgar's time from his sixth to his eleventh year was usefully employed in study at this excellent preparatory school. His tale entitled " William Wilson " is in part autobiographical, and it gives us a charming picture of the boy's school life in the somber hall with its oaken ceiling, and in the maze of its dormitory passages. The age and gloom of English architecture made deep impression upon him; then, and only then, after his earlier company with his foster-mother, does he seem ever to have entered a church. He was an athlete among his fellows ; a quick and capable scholar; but also a boy of moods and en- mities, free with his money and on his off days given to cakes and ale. The master of the school recognized his talent, but regretted that his guardian provided him with so much to spend. Vacations were doubtless occupied in travel, for Poe's writings show familiarity with a great number of famous castles and donjon- keeps, as well as with their blood-curdling histories. These years abroad made our poet a gentleman and a scholar, so far as early training could mold a pecu- liarly sensitive and wilful spirit. The return to Richmond in 1820 was followed by three years of schooling under Joseph H. Clarke, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and then by three more years under Master William Burk. Poe was easily the first of his schoolmates in his Latin and his French, but his accuracy and thoroughness were not equal to his own powers of perception. Though handsome in person, a swimmer and a boxer, he was l66 VERSES TO WOMEN not popular among his fellows. A certain moodiness and instability characterized him. This was partly due to the fact that his better-born classmates looked down upon the son of an actor and the recipient of a guardian's charity. Mr. Allan himself, notwithstand- ing his interest and indulgence, was not a man of af- fectionate nature, and it was his wife who most cared for the boy. There seems indeed to have grown up something like estrangement between the guardian and his young charge. Edgar's leadership of a Thes- pian Society may have awakened fear that he might, like his parents, gravitate to the stage. Poe, however, attracted women, and was attracted by them. - Some of his earliest verses were written in memory of a married lady who had spoken like a mother to the motherless boy, and who had soon after left him desolate by her death. The poem " To Helen " was the germ of " Lenore " and of " Irene," and we may see in it the first-fruits of the poet's genius : Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicsean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! FIRST-FRUITS OF POe's GENIUS 167 But there were other verses to younger women also, and there was an actual betrothal of the sixteen-year- old poet to a seventeen-year-old girl. Parents, how- ever, had not been consulted, and these youthful fancies were broken off when Edgar, in 1826, was matricu- lated in the University of Virginia, and the young lady had married another man. Mr. J. H. Whitty has edited the most complete critical edition of Poe's poems, and has prefaced it with a minute and painstaking account of the facts of the poet's life. He has also done good service by ex- huming from the Library of Congress and from the old " Graham's Magazine " certain lost poems of our author. One of these is entitled " The Divine Right of Kings," and it exhibits both Poe's susceptibility to female charms and his early skill in versification. I venture to transcribe it : The only King by right divine Is Ellen King, and were she mine, I'd strive for liberty no more, But hug the glorious chains I wore. Her bosom is an ivory throne Where tyrant virtue reigns alone; No subject vices dare interfere To check the power that governs here. Oh! would she deign to rule my fate, I'd worship Kings with kingly state, And hold this maxim all life long: The King — my King — can do no wrong. Would that our story of Poe's life might end here ! But its brilliant promise was the precursor of a gradual and fearful decline. Whether it was an outbreaking of 1 68 POE^S DISSIPATION AT COLLEGE innate tendencies hitherto repressed or a reaction from his disappointment in love, his brief course in college was marked by a recklessness of behavior which in- creased with his years and ended in insanity and death. He was no mean scholar, and he made some progress in Greek, and Spanish, and Italian. But the love for drink which he had learned at the dinner-table of his guardian, and which was fostered by the convivial habits of the planters' sons with whom he associated, was too much for his self-control, and he gave way to occasional intemperance. The draughts which his friends could stand with apparent impunity deprived him of reason. A single glass of wine excited him ; a^ second made him garrulous; a third turned the whole world into a merry-go-round. It was not the taste of liquor which tempted him, but rather its inebriating effect. He would toss off a whole goblet of brandy, without sugar or water, and then would be a lunatic. " At Jefferson University, Charlottesville," he writes, " I led a very dissipated life — the college at that period being shamefully dissolute." But he says long after- ward : " I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the desper- ate attempt to escape from torturing memories." He added gambling to drunkenness, and showed such ex- travagance in his wagers that he soon lost caste with his college mates. Poe had entered the university in February ; when its session closed in the following De- cember the young man's " debts of honor," so called, amounted to two thousand five hundred dollars. These TWO YEARS IN THE ARMY 169 Mr. Allan refused to pay, and Poe left the university in humiliation and disgrace. But he threw the blame of his discomfiture entirely upon his patron, for he says of this incident : " In early youth I deliberately threw away from me a large fortune, rather than endure a trivial wrong." He had forfeited his birthright like Esau, but he never, like Esau, repented with tears. He was offered a clerkship in his guardian's count- ing-room. But business had no attractions for him, and he fled to Boston. To hide his mortification from the world, to escape the stings of conscience, and per- haps to subject himself to needed discipline, he enlisted under an assumed name, as E. A. Perry, in the United States army, and spent nearly two years in the artil- lery service, first at Fort Independence, near Boston, and then at Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South Carolina. He was only eighteen when he became a soldier, but he gave his age as twenty-two. His con- duct in the service was so creditable that he was pro- moted to be sergeant-major. His officers recognized his superior education and refinement, and after nearly two years they used their influence to secure his recon- ciliation with his guardian. Mr. Allan apparently sent money for a substitute in the army, which the sub- stitute did not receive, and there was a report that Poe forged the signature of the substitute in order to appropriate it. Certain it is that Mr. Allan was obliged to pay the sum twice over, and that he never, after this, took the young man back into his family. He did, however, procure for him an appointment to a cadetship at West Point, and there, on July i, 1830, Poe entered the Military Academy. But on the fol- 170 POES FINAL BREAK WITH HIS PATRON lowing January twenty-eighth he was dismissed for neglecting his duties as cadet, and for general con- tempt of discipline. He was older than his classmates, and took the highest marks in mathematics and in French. But he was restless, harsh, and satirical, given to drinking and to escapades, and incapable of obedience as a soldier. Arrest, punishment, and ex- pulsion inevitably followed. It is no wonder that from this time Mr. Allan lost all confidence in his protege, and disclaimed all respon- sibility for him. Yet he seems to have paid him an annuity for three following years, and to have kept the wolf from the poet's door when he was first struggling for a standing in the literary world. His guardian's generosity was all the more creditable, since the first Mrs. Allan, Poe's special friend, had died, and Mr. Allan had now a child of his own by a second marriage. Poe went back to Richmond after his expulsion from West Point, hoping still to win back his guardian's favor. Mr. Allan was ill, and forbidden to receive visitors. Poe disregarded the prohibition of Mrs. Allan and made his way into the sick-room. This angered Mr. Allan, and he lifted his cane to chastise Poe, who re- tired in complete discomfiture. It was only a fit re- turn for Poe's insubordination and ingratitude, and it marked the end of all relations between them. In 1834 Mr. Allan died, and made no mention of Poe in his will.^ From 183 1 our poet lived in Baltimore with 2 Poe's contemptuous opposition to Mr. Allan's second marriage, and Poe's scandalous treatment of the second wife, must be added to the reasons for this neglect to provide for him. Mrs. Allan spoke of Poe's " ingratitude, fraud, and deceit," and, after her husband's^ death at the early age of fifty-two, she refused ever to meet the poet. Disparity in the parties' age does not justify Poe's opposition to the marriage, for, Avhile. Miss Paterson was twenty-five, Mr. Allan at the time was only forty-eight. IDOLATRY OF FAME I7I Mrs. Clemm, his deceased father's sister, and with her daughter Virginia, whom he afterward married. With the cutting off of his annuity his circumstances became greatly straitened, and his frequent lapses into intem- perance made his life wretched. Only the industry and affection of his aunt carried him through the resulting sicknesses and despondencies. But the winning of a prize of one hundred dollars by his tale of '' A Manu- script Found in a Bottle " rescued him from trouble, and gave him hope for the future. Poe was a man fiercely possessed by the desire for fame. "I love fame; I dote on it; I idolize it," he wrote. He aimed, to use his own words, " to kick up a bobbery." '' I am young, not yet 20, am a poet, if deep worship of all beauty can make me one, and wish to be so, in the more common meaning of the word. I would give the world to embody half the ideal afloat in my imagination." So early as his four- teenth year he had written verses, and in 1827, before enlisting in the army in Boston, he published a little book entitled " Tamerlane and Other Poems." " Tam- erlane " is the story, in verse, of a shepherd's son who, under the spur of an inordinate ambition, leaves his betrothed, without explaining his purpose, and under a feigned name seeks to win for her a throne. He suc- ceeds ; but when he returns to lay the crown at her feet, he finds that, in his absence and apparent desertion, she has died of grief. In this story of the Emperor of Samarcand, Poe found expression for some features of his own biography. He was just about to become a soldier, and under a feigned name. He was conscious of great literary powers, and he fancied that he could iy2 make the whole world sing his praises. He was an exile from home, and had already lost a friend most dear to him. The shadows of a settled melancholy were gathering about him. Death and the sepulcher loomed up in the distance. And the youthful poet has no refuge or comforter but pride: The passionate spirit which hath known, And deeply felt the silent tone Of its own self-supremacy — The soul which feels its innate right — The mystic empire and high power Given by the energetic might Of Genius, at its natal hour; Which knows (believe me at this time, When falsehood were a tenfold crime, There is a power in the high spirit To know the fate it will inherit) The soul, which knows such power, will still Find Pride the ruler of its will. And pride brings only despair and a broken heart. This earliest of Poe's verses seems now a prophecy of his end : I reach'd my home — my home no more — For all was flown that made it so — I pass'd from out its mossy door, In vacant idleness of woe. There met me on its threshold stone A mountain hunter, I had known In childhood, but he knew me not. Something he spoke of the old cot: It had seen better days, he said; There rose a fountain once, and there Full many a fair flower raised its head: But she who rear'd them was long dead, 173 And in such follies had no part, What was there left me nowf despair — A kingdom for a broken — heart. The second of these youthful poems demands no- tice, not only because it is his longest piece of verse, but also because it represents the imagination and trans- cendental style of his thinking. " Al Aaraaf," as he himself says, is a star discovered by Tycho Brahe, which appeared suddenly in the heavens, attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter, then as suddenly disappeared, and has never since been seen. He makes this star the abode of all the loveliness that perishes on earth. In a melodious rhapsody as dis- jointed as a dream, he celebrates the beauty of a world which earth's sorrows have never entered, and where no moral restraints hinder the activity of its denizens. Nesace, who seems the personified spirit of this ideal realm, summons her lover to join her there : " Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, With all thy train, athwart the moony sky, Apart — like fireflies in Sicilian night. And wing to other worlds another light! Divulge the secrets of thy embassy To the proud orbs that twinkle, and so be To every heart a barrier and a ban Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man! " We might well doubt whether this invocation had any definite meaning, if it were not for the partial explana- tion, in Part II, with regard to the ultimate destiny of the lovers : For what (to them) availeth it to know That Truth is Falsehood, or that Bliss is Woe? Sweet was their death — with them to die was rife T74 " THE ARABESQUE AND THE GROTESQUE " With the last ecstasy of satiate life; Beyond that death no immortality, But sleep that pondereth and is not " to be; " And there, oh, may my weary spirit dwell. Apart from Heaven's Eternity — and yet how far from Hell! What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim. Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn? But two; they fell; for Heaven no grace imparts To those who hear not for their beating hearts; A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover. Oh, where (and ye may seek the wide skies over) Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known? Unguided Love hath fallen 'mid " tears of perfect The lesson of the poem is manifestly this, that the delights of love are to be sought even at the price of annihilation. But I must leave the theology of " Al Aaraaf " for later exposition, and content myself now with pointing out that this juvenile poetry, though in- stinct with imagination and melody, was greatly lack- ing in unity and rationality. These latter merits came to Poe after years of experiment, and as the result of writing and reflection in other lines. Poetry witlv him was an occasional and a rare product — to use his own words, '* a passion, and not a purpose." The quan- tity of it was exceedingly small. He wrote exceedingly little, but gave endless emendation and polish to his work. In his day poetry was not a selling commodity ; the poet was forced to earn his living ; magazine litera- ture alone furnished him a support. His imagination made his first successful work to be " Tales of the Ara- besque and the Grotesque." He was the forerunner of Conan Doyle in his detective stories. The mystery and TALES OF THE CHARNEL-HOUSE 1 75 ingenuity of " The Gold Bug " and '' The Murders of the Rue Morgue " are distinctly new features of liter- ary romance. We cannot too highly praise the artistic skill with which the elements of his plots are mar- shaled, and every stroke is made to lead to the sudden and startling conclusion. But little by little Poe came to think that to startle was to succeed. His romance had not the realistic basis of Swift and Defoe. The-^ bizarre, the gruesome, the loathsome, the fiendish, occupied his thoughts and became the subjects of his pen. He aims to make our flesh creep. He appeals exclusively to the nerves. Burial alive, epileptic fits, the mesmerism of a dying man, the possession of one soul by that of another who has departed, somnam- bulism, metapsychosis, the gouging out of eyes, suicide- compacts, ghosts, tombs, endless sorrow and despair — these have never been more fearfully portrayed than by Edgar Allan Poe. " His realm," says Griswold, " was on the shadowy confines of human experience, among the abodes of crime, gloom, and horror, and there he delighted to surround himself with images of beauty and of terror, to raise his solemn palaces and ^o*" towers and spires in a night upon which should rise ^ "%^^ no sun." In all this he depicted the lashings of his own conscience, his utter lack of faith in God and in a life beyond the grave, his horror in view of the death to which his lost soul was hastening, and the unspeak- able misery and gloom of a sinner without Christ and without hope. There is a somber splendor about " The Fall of the House of Usher," and a melancholy sweet- ness about " Ligeia " ; but Poe's tales are tales of the charnel-house, and their odor of decay is quite foreign 176 POE AS EDITOR AND CRITIC lo the beauty which he held to be the end and aim of perfect art. Poetry had a rival not only in Poe's tales, but also in Poe's criticism. From being a contributor to maga- zines he became an editor. Instead of writing stories of his own, he came to criticize the work of others. He passed successively in review all the prominent authors of his day, whether American or English. Much of our literature had been characterized by dull mediocrity, and this dull mediocrity had been praised. Poe subjected this dull work to trenchant criticism. His insight was keen, he had correct principles of judg- ment, and he had little mercy for those who failed to satisfy his tests. We owe him a great debt, for he -Vwas our first American critic. But he was too exclu- sively censorious. He wielded the broadax rather than the rapier. His magazine motto seemed to be, " Hang, draw, and quarter," it has been wittily said. His exposure of pretense and ridicule of error made him many enemies. He aimed to startle even here. His criticisms commanded attention indeed. Within a few months he increased the circulation of a maga- zine from five to forty-five thousand. But there was an ill temper and arrogance in his writing which re- sulted from disordered habits. His tale, " The Imp ^ of the Perverse," well describes his own mental and moral unsoundness. His treatment of Longfellow can hardly be explained except as an ebullition of envy and malice. He prefaced his review of " The Voices of the Night " with the acrimonious title, " Mr. Long- fellow, and other Plagiarists " ; and he characterized the poet's " Midnight Mass for the Dying Year " as ALIENATION OF FRIENDS 177 belonging '' to the most barbarous class of literary rob- bery." Longfellow generously replied, '* The harsh- ness of his criticisms I have never attributed to any- thing but the irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong." Those who stood nearer to Poe could not form so charitable a judgment. Griswold, Willis, and Lowell bore with him, but he attacked them all, until forbearance was no longer a virtue. Hawthorne, he thought, had stolen directly from passages in " William Wilson." " Mr. Bryant is not all a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Car- lyle is an ass, and Emerson is his imitator." He calls Miss Fuller " that detestable old maid." Lowell is " a ranting abolitionist, a fanatic for the mere love of fanaticism." Lowell replied that Poe sometimes mistook his vial of prussic acid for his inkstand. His colleagues could not forever endure his whims and his abuse. One connection after another was broken ; one friend after another was alienated. Brilliant promise was succeeded by pitiful failure. Riotous intemperance ruined his prospects even after long periods of ab- stinence. The use of opium was added to indulgence in drink, and under the influence of these stimulants Poe was a madman. The story of his marriage and of the illness and death of his young and beautiful wife is most pathetic. Virginia was the child of Mrs. Clemm, the aunt who toiled for him and sheltered him through all his escapades and illnesses. His tale " Eleonora " is auto- biographical. It tells the story of a romantic love, which seems at first to have been illicit. A license was issued in September, 1835, but there is no record of 178 " ANNABEL LEE " marriage following until May, 1836. Then a public marriage took place, when Virginia was hardly four- teen, though a relative satisfied the legal requirement by testifying that she was twenty-two. Her married life lasted for twelve troubled years. A friend de- scribes the scene as she neared her end : " There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accom- pany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. The wonder- ful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet." In 1847 she died, and the poet wrote his memorial of her in " Annabel Lee " : It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; POE TO HIMSELF A VICTIM 1 79 So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: For the moon never beams, without bringing- me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. This is real poetry, and it expresses at least occa- sional and temporary emotion. But it is certain that Poe made love to other women during the lifetime of his wife. And though he clung to her for sympathy and pity, he plunged her into poverty and distress. He regarded himself as a victim, however, rather than as a criminal, and I quote from one of his letters his own self- justification : l80 " WHIM, IMPULSE, PASSION " I can do no more than hint. This " evil " was the great- est that can befall a man. Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-ves- sel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of the year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene. Then again — again — and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death — and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate perti- nacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in a very unusual degree — I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank — God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity. To Lowell he wrote : " My life has been whim, im- pulse, passion " — and this is the only explanation of his career. In him Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were mixed. He was by turns industrious and slothful. One of his friends touched the secret of his troubles when he told Poe that '' no man is safe who drinks before breakfast." Whatever we may think of Poe's defense, drink and opium were his undoing. His tales, his criticism, and finally the poem of " The Raven " gave him an ever- increasing fame, and his connection with '* The Satur- day Visitor," " The Southern Literary Messenger," " The Gentleman's Magazine," " Graham's Magazine," "The Evening Mirror," "The Broadway Journal," whether as contributor or as editor, gave successive promise of pecuniary reward. But there was a demon beside him that always snatched the cup of prosperity from his hand when he was about to drink. Though poe's miserable death i8i he made friends, one by one, of Wilmer, White, Ken- nedy, Tuckerman, Burton, Graham, Greeley — all of them men who sought to aid him — his ingratitude and rancorous denunciation broke up every friendship, and left him solitary and unhappy. He joined the Sons of Temperance, and broke his vows. He sought to re- pair his fortunes by marriage, and forfeited all claims to his bride by drunkenness on the eve of the intended wedding. He was a physical and mental wreck. The end came at last. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York had been places of his temporary residence. He fled from one to another, in hope to escape the fiend that pursued him. He left Richmond in October, 1849, to go North. But in Baltimore temptation assailed him, and he succumbed. He wandered about the city for five days in a state of intoxication. He was found unconscious, clad like a beggar in soiled and tattered garments, in a place of disreputable resort, and was taken to a hospital, where for two whole days he suf- fered the agonies of delirium tremens, and talked in- cessantly to spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. Then came two more days of alternate violence and of collapse from exhaustion, in which he cried that his best friend would be one who would blow out his wretched brains. At last, at three o'clock on a Tuesday morning, he moved his head gently, uttered the words, " Lord, help my poor soul ! " and expired. We have no other record of prayer or recognition of God's existence but this, in all Poe's life. He used the word " God," indeed, in his poems, but it was only as a conventional and rhetorical accommodation to the beliefs of his readers. He thought himself, and, as 1 82 POE AN ATHEIST OF THE HEART nearly as it was possible for any man to be, he zifas, an atheist. But are there in this world any real atheists ? Theoretically, yes ; practically, no. In prac- tice, all men show by their language, actions, and ex- pectations that they have the idea of a Being above them, upon whom they are dependent, who is their standard of truth, beauty, and goodness, and who im- poses law upon their moral natures. But in theory, men may ignore or even deny that they have any idea of such a Being, and may believe such an idea to be self-contradictory and irrational. The only way in which we can convince these unbelievers is by appeal- ing to their underlying convictions, and by showing^ them that they practically admit what they theoretically deny.'' Poe's restlessness of soul, his tormenting con- science, his impotence of will, his frantic appeals to women to rescue him from degradation, his dreadful fears of death and the grave, were evidences that deep down in his heart was an inextinguishable belief in a just God with whom he was at enmity and whom he feared to meet in the judgment. Poe's atheism was an atheism of the heart, rather than an atheism of the head. He lacked the will to be- lieve. The secret of professed atheism is really a dis- like for the character and the requirements of God. Theism humbles man's pride, implies his dependence, as a creature and as a sinner. He is willing to believe in self ; why will he not believe in God ? " Belief," as Emerson says, " consists in accepting the affirma- tions of the soul; unbelief, in rejecting them." But acceptance or rejection is determined by the will. .Since neither theism nor atheism can be proved, we choose BLINDED BY SELF-CONCEIT 183 the alternative which we prefer. Do we wish a God to exist ? Then we may beHeve in his existence, and our faith will justify itself by its results. We ask the atheist to trust the voice of his own nature, and to make experiment as to its truth. We claim that this is the method of science. Science assumes nature and her laws at the start, but verification comes with every successive step. Religion, in like manner, assumes God's existence at the beginning, but each following experience furnishes new evidence that the assumption is correct. Poe was too proud to take this childlike at- titude toward the truth. " My whole nature utterly revolts," he exclaimed, " at the idea that there is any Being in the universe superior to myself!" And so this confessed liar, slanderer, gambler, and drunkard, if not also a forger and a seducer, deified self and turned his back upon his only Lord and Redeemer. Conceit of his own powers and his own worth so blinded him that Infinite Truth and Goodness made no impression upon him. Self was the only God he be>-l- lieved or served or worshiped. In this respect he fur- nishes, among all our poets, the most perfect illustra- tion of the insanity of sin. And yet he did not know himself to be a sinner, for his physician quotes him as saying : " By the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek." It might at first sight seem vain to speak of such a man's theology. But every man has a theology. He is compelled to reflect upon the facts of the universe, and upon his own relations to the power above him i 184 POe's theology in '' EUREKA ** Upon which he is dependent. Even if he is a professed atheist, he is driven by an accusing conscience to self- justification. He must give a reason for the very unbelief that is in him. Poe has declared his theology in his prose poem entitled " Euxeka." He regarded it as the greatest work of his life, and that by which he would be especially remembered. He thought it of more importance than Sir Isaac Newton's discovery of gravitation. It was a materialistic explanation of the universe, its origin, development, and destiny. He propounded it with amazing confidence, and proposed an edition of fifty thousand copies as a mere begin- ning. It was but the shallow and half-crazy dream of a sciolist who had cribbed his slender basis of facts, 4and from a single primitive assumption had deduced a universe without a God. It deserves no prolonged study, yet it furnishes such a clue to his theory of poetry that I cannot avoid a brief notice of its doctrine. *Dreamy and unscientific as it is, it shows conclusively that theories of the universe are too often constructed to excuse men's practical disobedience to God. And the results of Poe's theory in his own case show that, instead of being God's truth, it was a devil's lie to ensnare and destroy him. While the assumption of God's existence ennobles and saves, the assumption of a godless universe leads only to intellectual and moral ruin. > Poe was an absolute materialist. He regarded mind as only an etherealized and sensitive form of matter. Body and mind go hand in hand, and are never sepa- rated. Whenever he speaks of God, and of God's volition, we must remember that it is a material God AN ABSOLUTE MATERIALIST 1 85 that he has in mind, and that the conception and act of such a God are indistinguishable from* merely physical instinct. ^' Is not God immaterial?" he asks. He replies : *' There is no immateriality. That which is not matter is not at all. . . There are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing " — and he speaks of electricity as if this answered to his conception of a material God. " Matter, unparticled, indivisible, one, permeating all things, and impelling all things, this matter is God. . . Thinking is the motion of this mat- ter. . . God, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter." The universe has origi- nated, he declares, in the creation by this God of a single particle of matter. How a material God was capable of a creative volition he does not inform us. This material particle had powers of radiation and mul- tiplication. It was diffused through a vast though limited region of space. The originating principle acted continuously in each portion of the matter into which the particle had become divided, and the result was the various bodies, molecular and molar, of the great system. The first element in the universe then was repulsion ; and this is nothing but mind or spirit in expression. The original unity has thus become mul- tiplicity. But diffusion and multiplicity do not of themselves provide for progress. Progress can be secured only by partial return to unity. The original diffusive or repulsive force is therefore to some extent withdrawn, and attraction takes its place. Gravitation follows upon radiation, and attraction is body, as re- pulsion was mind or spirit. So we have multiplicity resulting in mind, and unity resulting in body. But the l86 A SELF-DEIFYING SCHEME return to the unity must go on, until all things are again resolved into the original simplicity. What was originally one must become one again. Separation of intelligences must give place to unification of intel- ligence. As each mind was only a portion of the one Being whom we call God, so each mind must be ab- sorbed in that One and lose its separate identity. There is no such thing as personal immortality. But our compensation is that, as we are now only portions of God, we shall hereafter take all creation into union with ourselves, and so shall ourselves become God. In a note appended to his own copy of " Eureka," Poe wrote : The pain of the consideration that we shall lose our iden- tity ceases at once when we further reflect that the process, as above described, is neither more nor less than that of the absorption, by each individual intelligence, of all other in- telligences (that is, of the Universe) into its own. That God may be all in all, each must become God. This fantastic and self-deifying scheme does not end with the present universe to which we belong. There are many universes, both in space and in time, and there are as many nature-gods to match them. The tendency to unity belongs to all. But this tendency is only a blind physical impulse which is misnamed when it is called spiritual. It presents to us endless cycles of birth and death, of growth and decay. It is pantheistic and polytheistic by turns, but it is never theistic. Its so-called God has no eye to pity and no arm to save. The beauty which it sees in the uni- verse is only the phosphorescent glow which marks in the darkness a mound of corruption. It gives no real POE CONFESSES HIS PHILOSOPHY FUTILE 1 87 explanation of the origin or the progress of the sys- tem, since its God is only material force, without de- signing intelligence and without love for his creatures. It makes the universe a reaction upon will, instead of being itself will. Human will is mere illusion ; man is a victim instead of an actor ; and Poe deals with crime against man, but never with sin against God. Morality becomes mere convention. In such a universe the best we can do is to plod on, yielding to our every impulse and bearing the penalty of mistakes. Conscience re- jects such a scheme as contradicting our moral nature; our noblest aspirations rise in rebellion against such hopeless subjection of the spirit; and Christ's positive revelation of life and immortality make Poe's seem only a madman's dream. In fact, he confesses the futility of his own philosophy when he writes : " My forlorn and darkened nature is full of forebodings. Nothing cheers or comforts me. The future looks a dreary blank. But I will struggle on and hope against hope." The dreamer dwelt already in an Inferno like that which Dante pictured in his " Divine Comedy," and the horrors of which are portrayed by Michelangelo in his " Last Judgment." " Eureka " has been called *' a prevision of the modern doctrine of evolution." It certainly reminds us of Herbert Spencer's process from homogeneity to heterogeneity. But it is not original with Poe. It merely reflects the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, and the first suggestion of it may have come to Poe in his childhood. Whitty, in his Memoir of Poe, tells us that John Allan, Poe's guardian, was a rather liberal thinker, and suggests that the germ out of which the 1 88 BEAUTY TO POE MERELY PHYSICAL poet's later materialism was developed may have come from this source. " There seems an autobiographical hint of this in his tale * The Domain of Arnheim,' which he has said contains ' much of his soul.' Here he wrote : " Some peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed ma- terialism all his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveli- ness. It is certain that Poe's scheme of the universe greatly influenced his ideas of poetry as well as of life. He was a worshiper of beauty, and in his scheme of the universe beauty has no relation to truth or to good- ness; or rather, he would say, beauty is itself truth and goodness, and there is no truth or goodness be- sides. Truth and goodness are merely by-products of beauty; beauty is the standard by which truth and goodness are to be measured; beauty itself has no standard of measurement, but is to measure all things. This is to reverse all right rules. Poe's denial of a rational Ordainer and Upholder of the universe renders his judgments irrational. Beauty, like truth and good- ness, implies a standard to which it conforms. There must be a God to justify our sense of beauty, as well as our confidence in our mental processes and our con- viction of moral obligation. The universe is a thought, an ordered whole, a moral system; there must be a Thinker, a Designer, "a Lawgiver, as the Author, Up- holder, Ruler, of our mental and moral life. And what poe's essentials of poetry 189 is true in the intellectual and moral realm is equally true in the esthetic realm. Beauty is conformity to a T^ standard, and that standard is"the eternal Beauty in .' God. But in him it is " the beauty of holiness," and \ is never separated from truth and goodness. Poe sought beauty apart from God — ^but such beauty ap- peals only to transitory and irrational emotion ; it can- not justify itself to reason; it is seductive and delusive ; it glorifies the evil as well as the good ; it is pessimistic and degrading ; it ceases to be beauty, by cutting loose from the true and the good, and by making itself supreme. Poe was " the wild poet " who exemplified these false principles of ethics. He claimed that the awakening y ol emotion is the sole aim of poetry. Emotion, he would say, is awakened only by beauty; truth and goodness are incidental, and never primary. There is no thrill of emotion like that of hopeless sorrow, and the death of a loved and beautiful woman marks the acme of human grief. Add now the pain of parting and the horror of the tomb; picture these in verse of penetrating melody, and you have the essentials of poetry. But who does not see that the ideal element has been lost ? True poetry presupposes a divine order, and a worthy end, in the universe. There can be no great poetry without faith. Optimism, and not pessi- mism, must be at the heart of melody, or melody be- comes funereal and repulsive. I can best show what I mean by quoting the poem in which Poe's philosophy is most vividly and perfectly represented. The title of the poem is highly significant. It is " The Conqueror Worm." 190 " THE CONQUEROR WORM " Lo! 't is a gala night Within the lonesome latter years. An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears. Sit in a theater to see A play of hopes and fears. While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly; Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their condor wings Invisible Woe. That motley drama — oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot; And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude: A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes — it writhes! — with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out — out are the lights — out all! And over each quivering form The curtain, a funeral pall. Comes down with the rush of a storm, AN IMAGINATION FED ON THE ABNORMAL I9I While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, " Man," And its hero, the Conqueror Worm. Here is melody and the thrill of emotion, but all in the interest of a godless universe and a hopeless hu- manity. Here is imagination, but only of the bizarre and the gruesome. The unbelieving poet can con- struct only a universe of sorrow and of death. Death indeed is the annihilation of personal and conscious existence, and is the only hope of mortals. In his poem " For Annie " he writes : Thank Heaven! the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last. And the fever called " Living " Is conquered at last. Man is " a puppet, cast in the form of God," and conquered by the " Conqueror Worm." Poe's iujagination had only limited range. His moral nature was too self -centered to give him any proper view of human life or destiny. He reveled in the abnormal and revolting incidents of our existence. The grim, the weird, the spectral, the terrible, im- pressed him most. These left his appetite for beauty unsatisfied; and his best poetry is the expression of disappointed hopes and of everlasting regrets. There are three essays which will live when his " Eureka " is forgotten — essays in which he exhibits unusual powers of analysis and sanity of judgment, and which notwithstanding reveal the shortcomings of his art. 192 POE S POETIC PRINCIPLE " The first is entitled " The Poetic Principle." Poetry, he maintains, is the result of man's struggle to appre- hend the supernal Loveliness and to penetrate into the mystery that surrounds us. It is the rhythmical crea- tion of Beauty. Its object is the pleasurable excite- ment of the soul by our recombination of the images found in nature. But, since human effort always fails to realize the ideal after which it strives, there must in all true poetry be an element of sorrow. A " certain^ taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty." Since poetry aims to rouse and to elevate the emotions, it is " inde- pendent of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason." The didactic and the moral are foreign to the realm of poetry. It is more nearly allied to music than to any other art. Poe was not a musician, like Lanier; and Lanier improved upon Poe's theory. But Poe exemplifies his own doctrine by verse so dainty and sweet, that it enchains our attention and persuades us against our wills. He dealt in'^' the witchery of words." He caught from"*Negro minstrelsy the tell- ing effect of the refrain. His finished poems were works of endless elaboration, in which every stroke is effective, and the whole product tends from the begin- ning to a predestined end. His poem " The Bells " shows him, at his best, as the melodist and literary artist : Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle 193 All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme. To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells,— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Then we hear " the mellow wedding-bells." But these are followed by " the loud alarum bells " : In the startled ear of night How they scream out their aflfright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek. Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! And finally come the funeral bells. Here Poe is at home, for beyond death he has no vision of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life : Hear the tolling of the bells. Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. 194 " And the people — ah, the people, They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone — They are neither man nor woman. They are neither brute nor human. They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A psean from the bells; And his merry bosom swells With the psean of the bells, And he dances, and he yells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. The second of Poe's didactic essays has for its sub- ject " The Philosophy of Composition." I regard this as one of the most thoughtful and instructive papers ever written by an American. It may well be set side by side with Herbert Spencer's essay on style, in which he propounds the principle that its greatest essential is economy of the reader's or hearer's attention — the more energy is expended upon the form, the less there remains to grapple with the substance. Poe declares that every work of literary art must be written back- ward; the writer must first know his terminus ad \uem; analysis 4?iust com^ beforje^ynthesis ; the essay must be a gradual approach to a conclusion perfectly defined in the author's mind, but only by successive steps made known to the reader. The element of POE S THEORY IN THE RAVEN I95 surprise is necessary to success; attention must be gained, and kept, till the denouement caps the climax and satisfies the mind. Here is a principle of universal application, and writers of note do consciously or un- consciously observe it. Poe does us a great service by illustrating the principle in his composition of " The Raven." I dismiss, as already considered, his theory that melancholy is the noblest and most legitimate of the poetical tones ; that is only his inference from a godless and hopeless universe. I dismiss also his view that the true poem must always be a brief one, fop this view rests upon the premise that poetry appeals, never to reason, but only to fleeting emotion: the epic may satisfy our minds, not only by its successive scenes, but by the unity of their sequence and development. And finally I dismiss his doctrine of the refrain, as unques- tionably possessing originality and value. I call at- tention only to the fact that the last word of the poem is the first in the poet's mind as he begins to construct Jiis 3vork. And that word is " Nevermore." The subject of the poem is hopeless sorrow, and the word " nevermore " expresses it. But that word must have a speaker. Who feels such sorrow more than the lover, the object of whose affection has been snatched from his side ? What shall be the locality of his grief ? It must be the solitude of his study. How can " Never- more " be uttered in an endless monotone? Only a non-reasoning being is capable of such heartless re- iteration. The parrot is the flippant bird of day ; only the raven is the speaking bird of night. How shall the lover and the raven be brought together? There must be a tempestuous night, and the flapping of the raven's 196 " THE RAVEN " wings seems to be a knocking at the door. The open- ing of the door admits the sable visitor. The raven enters to find refuge from the storm, and perches upon the bust of Pallas over the chamber door. The lover begins by jesting at the strange apparition, and by ask- ing questions. But soon he is mystified and solemnized. To all his successive inquiries the bird makes but one reply: it is the ominous "Nevermore." And the re- sult is only the deepening of the mystery and the sor- row of death. As a lesson in literary workmanship, this poem is unique and invaluable, and that without our deciding how far in Poe's case the process of com- position was conscious or unconscious. " The Raven " is his masterpiece, and, as uniting his melody and his melancholy, it may be regarded as one of the great works of American literature — a work as wonderful and as perfect as Gray's " Elegy in a Country Church- yard." For that reason, I may be permitted to quote from it several of its most significant stanzas : Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tap- ping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. " 'T is some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my chamber door: Only this, and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; 197 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door: Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, — " Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, " art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly,! implore: Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil— prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore. Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." " Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend! " I shrieked, upstarting: " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! . IQo POE A MASTER OF TECHNIQUE Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from ofif my door! " Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dream- ing, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor: And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore! Here is mastery of the technique of verse, and a musical refrain, the impression of which deepens to the very end. But there is also a gathering gloom that chills and affrights. Is this the noblest poetry? Not unless it most truly represents life. Such predeter- mined sadness is irrational, for hopeless sorrow denies the reality of a divine providence and gives the lie to God's word. It declares that there is no " balm in Gilead," and that Christ has died in vain. Poe was as much a pagan, as if he had never heard of the Cross. He sorrowed as those without hope. He did not see that " the last enemy that shall be abolished is death," and that our God and Saviour has made death to be the gateway to eternal life. Poe's poetry is therefore as unmoral and misleading as if written in the interests of vice. It tempts men, by reaction, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I acquit our poet of any conscious pandering to im- morality. If there is any condoning or glorifying of 199 illicit passion, it is veiled and unintentional. But to remove all hope from humanity is to doom it to death. Despair leads men into sin as often as does the desire for pleasure. And I must regard the quenching of the light of hope as a vicious element in Poe's poetry. " The Rationale of Verse " is a third essay in which our poet attempts a scientific exposition of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification. Here too, he has shown his best powers, and has done great service to his art. His account of the genesis of prosody is novel and interesting. He holds that the rudiment of verse is found in the spondee — equality of sound in two accented syllables. Then the perception of monotone gives rise to an attempt at its relief: the iambus and the trochee are results. Dactylic and anapaestic words naturally follow ; and then the line, which first curtails and then defines the length of a sequence. If lines are to be defined to the ear, equality in sound of the final syllables is needed, and hence arises rhyme. The be- ginnings of rhyme are found in Aristophanes and in Horace, and Dr. Charles A. Briggs has maintained that it is not wanting even in Genesis 4 : 23, 24 and in the Psalms. The stanza gives limitation and unity to lines. The refrain relieves their monotony. It is impossible in this article even to summarize Poe's doc- trine. Suffice it to say that he has propounded an original and profound theory of versification — a theory which frees the subject from much superstitious pedan- try of the past, and which permits the poet to follow more readily the promptings of the Muse. Of all our poets he has given most scientific expression to the technique of his art. 200 As a last illustration of Poe's theory that poetry is a metrical appeal to emotion — an appeal skilfully adapted to awaken yearning and regret — let me quote his poem entitled " The Haunted Palace " : In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden. On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting, Porphyrogene, In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing. And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing. In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. A PICTURE OF POE S SOUL 20I But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow- Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory- That blushed and bloomed. Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windov/s see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh — but smile no more. " The Haunted Palace " is a picture of Poe's own soul. It reminds us of " The Living Temple " by the Puritan John Howe. That represents human nature as originally a magnificent temple in which God dwelt and manifested his glory. But the priests were faith- less and the spoiler came; it was deserted by Deity, and only broken column and fallen architrave re- mained to show its former splendor; it came to be the haunt of unclean birds, and evil spirits congre- gated in its courts. But God did not forsake the work of his own hands; at infinite cost he began to restore the ruined temple ; he will not cease his effort until he has rescued it from his foes and has filled it with his praise. But the palace of Poe's soul was still in possession of fiends, and he had no hope of recovering the glory he had lost. Exquisite literary art witnessed to the greatness of his original endowment, but with this art there was bound up a pessimistic unbelief that 202 CONFLICTING ESTIMATES OF POE shut out all the light of heaven and left him a prey to remorse and despair. His life and work teach us that true poetry is born only of true character ; that beauty cannot be divorced from truth ; that art for art's sake is the ruin of art itself; and that obedience to God and acceptance of his revelation in Christ are the only means of restoring lost character or of opening to us the treasures of the universe. No one of our poets has had so many memoirs writ- ten of him, and about no other has been waged such warfare of opinion. Emerson calls him " the jingle- man " ; Henry James thinks his verses " valueless " ; Brownell regards him as " a conjurer in literature and a charlatan," " our only Ishmael " among the poets, and " our solitary artist." But Tennyson is quoted by Brander Matthews as ranking Poe " highest among American poets — not unworthy to stand beside Catul- lus, the most melodious of the Latins, and Heine, the most tuneful of the Germans." Gosse calls Poe the first of American writers ; and Beyer declares that " he excels all English writers since Milton in the equality of 'his artistry in both the great forms of expression, prose and poetry." Each of these parties has much to say for itself, and our judgment between them can- not be an unqualified one. Poe is certainly great in form. But a haunting melody is not the highest poetry. Substance must equal form, or the mind is unsatisfied. Truth and goodness must furnish that substance. Every human work must ultimately come before Christ as its Judge. Let us ask how Christ judges even now. It is the purpose of these essays to weigh our poets in the balances of the sanctuary, and GRISWOLD S VIEW OF POE 20^ to estimate their moral and religious significance. We may grant to Poe a technical skill and musical cadence as great as Swinburne's, while we find in him a bitter and defiant melancholy like that of Byron. Lauvriere calls him " the poet of the outcast soul." Andrew Lang calls his poetry " the echo of a lyre from behind the hills of death " — yes, we add, from the Inferno of sin and guilt and despair — and such poetry is melody without truth and without love. I close my essay with two quotations. The first is from Griswold, Poe's chosen literary executor, who knew him best and formed the most unbiased judg- ment of his life : Poe, says Griswold, " Was at all times a dreamer — dwelling in ideal realms peo- pled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in pas- sionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry; or, with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms; and all night, with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him — close by the Aidenn where were those he loved — the Aidenn which he might never see but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death. " He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of ' The Raven ' was probably much more nearly than has been sup- posed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. He was that bird's 204 griswold's view of poe — ' unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore: Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of " Never — nevermore." * " Every genuine author, in a greater or less degree, leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his personal character: elements of his immortal being, in which the in- dividual survives the person. While we read the pages of 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' or of 'Mesmeric Revela- tions,' we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indica- tions of the idiosyncrasies — of what was most remarkable and peculiar — in the author's intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of his nature, only the symbols of his juster action; for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith, in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole system with him was an imposture. This convic- tion gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villainy, while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian, in Bulwer's novel of ' The Caxtons.' Passion, in him, compre- hended many of the worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural ad- vantages of this poor boy — his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmos- phere — had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious — bad enough, but not the worst — for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellent cynicism — his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed in him no moral sus- ceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a 205 morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species — only the hard wish to succeed — not shine, not serve — succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit." And my last quotation is from Tennyson's " Palace of Art." His picture of the unbelieving soul who in that habitation enthrones herself seems a description of Poe's ambition and of Poe's end : " * I take possession of man's mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl. I sit as God holding no form of creed. But contemplating all.* " Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone, Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, And intellectual throne. "And so she throve and prosper'd; so three years She prosper'd; on the fourth she fell. Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, Struck thro' with pangs of hell. " Lest she should fail and perish utterly, '.God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of personality, Plagued her with sore despair. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was born Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood Laughter at her self-scorn. * What! is not this my place of strength,' she said, * My spacious mansion built for me. Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid Since my first memory?' ¥ 206 THE LAST WORDS OF POE " But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And horrible nightmares, "And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame. And, with dim fretted foreheads all, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall. " She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame. Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name; " And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair, But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, No comfort anywhere; " She howl'd aloud, * I am on fire within. There comes no murmur of reply. What is it that will take away my sin. And save me lest I die? ' " Did Poe, in his last hour, feel his need and beg for mercy? Let us hope that this was his meaning, when he cried, " Lord, help my poor soul ! " and let us hope that He who had mercy upon the penitent thief had mercy upon him. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW That is a great day in one's history when he gets his first view of the beauty and the mystery of poetry. Far-reaching vistas open before him — a new world of wonder and delight. The poet who awakens his soul to see what the poet himself saw, and so creates in him the poetic instinct, becomes to him a sort of demigod, and is worshiped forever after. I begin my essay on Longfellow with vivid recollection of the admiration, and even awe, with which he first inspired me. He introduced me to literature, and gave me the freedom of the mind. His " Psalm of Life " encour- aged me to think that I too might make my life sub- lime. And what he did for me he did for a multitude of others. The excellent biography written by Samuel Longfellow, his brother, gives extracts from many letters of men well known, which show that the poet's early productions were germs from which sprang a great literary harvest. My purpose in this essay, however, is to disclose even a larger influence of Longfellow than this upon individual writers. His influence was national. He rose to fame in a time of comparative uncouthness and mediocrity. We were too young for literary ele- gance, and too practical to appreciate ideal creations. 209 210 THE PARENTS OF LONGFELLOW Longfellow bridged the gulf between us and the past, between us and Europe, between us and the whole world of romance. He was one of the first to profit by absorbing foreign culture and by importing it into America. His liberal, loving, sympathetic spirit was a garden-plot in which plants hitherto exotic were nourished for distribution over our whole broad com- monwealth. If Bryant was the father of American poetry, Longfellow was as certainly its first culti- vator and enricher. With a broader view of life than Bryant's, a finer sense of form than Emerson's, a keener apprehension of ideal beauty than Whittier's, a sounder morality than Poe's, he was our first all-round poet and teacher of poetry, and of all our American poets the most beloved. The true poet is born, not made, and he owes much to his ancestry. Providence ordained that Longfellow should come of good stock. His father was a lawyer of integrity and courtesy, social and public-spirited, a graduate of Harvard College and a genuine scholar. He was so highly esteemed that his fellow citizens chose him to be their representative in Congress. The government of the family was kindly, but strict. The father kept watch over his children's education, criti- cizing their youthful productions, and directing their thoughts to God, as their Creator, Preserver, and Friend. From his mother our poet probably derived his gifts of imagination and of sympathy. She was beautiful in person and gracious in demeanor. In her early days she was fond of gaiety. Music and dancing had great attractions for her. She loved nature also, even in its wilder and more sublime aspects, and thun- ENVIRONMENT OF LONGFELLOW S BOYHOOD 211 der-storms were her delight. But she was, above all, a woman of old-fashioned piety; though her love of Bible and sermon and psalm was accompanied by in- terest in romance and by endless ministrations to the poor. She was the confidante of her children, the cor- rector of their faults, but also the recipient of their joyful and hopeful confessions. If parentage alone could make a poet, Longfellow was in this respect richly blest. It is also true that the poet is made, and not born. He owes as much to nurture as he owes to nature. Who shall say how much of Longfellow's power was the fruit of his environment and of his education? His poem, " My Lost Youth," is a memorial of the strong influence exerted upon him by his home in Port- land, his outlook over Casco Bay, and his wandering in Deering's Woods. Casco Bay, in full view of Port- land, was the scene of a naval battle in the war of 1812, upon which the boy of five years gazed with wonder, and the impression of which he never lost : I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o'er the tide! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: ** A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." " The shadows of Deering's Woods," behind the town, were remembered as the scene of " friendships old " and " early loves " : 212 And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: " A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." He does well to close each stanza with two lines of that old Lapland song; for '' the child is father of the man," and '' beginnings make endings." Nature and nurture act and react upon each other. The boy Longfellow inherited from his mother a sprightliness and impressibility which enamored him with singing and dancing. His father seems to have added a quiet and reserve of manner, which appeared in his avoidance of everything noisy or violent. As a schoolboy, he did work equal to that of classmates twice his age. He was a lover of books, and even thus early merited the characterization of a later critic who called him " the bookish Longfellow." His home was fairly well stocked with works of poetry and prose, and the boy devoured them. But the first book that fascinated him, and roused his ambition, was " The Sketch Book " of Washington Irving. " Whenever I open its pages," he says, " I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth." And the first poet to whom he made allegiance was William Cullen Bryant. In his later years he acknowledges his indebtedness, and quotes Dante's ad- dress of gratitude to Vergil, " Thou art my master and my author." 213 At the age of fifteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at an advanced standing, and there at eighteen he was graduated. The institution had been founded only twenty years before, at Brunswick, twenty-five miles from his home in Portland. His father was one of its trustees. It had begun with but eight students, and a single building which was the residence of presi- dent and pupils alike. In our poet's time it was still a small college, but it had been adopted by the new- State of Maine, and many distinguished citizens had sent their sons thither. James Bowdoin had presented it with a costly collection of paintings, drawings, and minerals — a collection which he had made in Europe, and which was finer than any other that America then possessed. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a member of Longfellow's class. He was a shy and reserved young man, then little known to his fellows, but w^ith whom in after years our poet formed one of his warmest friendships. John S. C. Abbott was also a classmate; and Franklin Pierce, afterward President of the United States, was a student in the college. There was much of emulation and ambition in that little company, and it was here and now that both Longfellow and Hawthorne made their first ventures into the field of literature. Biographers have not sufficiently noted the fact that Maine, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was still a home of the American Indian. Its lakes were full of trout, and its forests full of deer. The Penob- scot or Passamaquoddy chief, in his paint and wam- pum and feathers, was a frequent visitor to the scat- tered villages; and, though he was somewhat tamed 214 LONGFELLOW S LITERARY AMBITION and civilized, legends of his former savagery were rife at every fireside. Longfellow became interested in Indian life and manners ; he read Heckewelder's " Ac- count " of their history and customs ; here was the germ of his future " Hiawatha." Now too, he begins to feel the poetic impulse and to write verses. But it is not the Algonquin or O jib way chief who furnishes the theme; it is rather some maiden, of fairer com- plexion and tenderer spirit, who inspires the youthful poet. As a specimen of his earliest versifying, I may quote the first and the last stanzas of his poem ad- dressed " To lanthe " : When upon the western cloud Hang day's fading roses, When the linnet sings aloud And the twilight closes, — As I mark the moss-grown spring By the twisted holly, Pensive thoughts of thee shall bring Love's own melancholy. Then when tranquil evening throws Twilight shades above thee, And when early morning glows, — Think on those that love thee! For an interval of years We ere long must sever, But the hearts that love endears Shall be parted never. The youth of eighteen was already seeking his voca- tion, and love-dreams gave place to preparation for the work of life. He had written many college poems, and some of them had been printed in the " United States Literary Gazette," published in Boston. He LONGFELLOW A PROFESSOR AT BOWDOIN 21^ wrote to his father that he eagerly aspired after future eminence in literature; "my whole soul," he says, " burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centers in it" But he counted the cost, and knew that acquaintance with other languages, and familiarity with their best authors, were an indispensable condi- tion of success. At first he aimed only at a post-gradu- ate year at Cambridge, with a view to the acquisition of Italian. Better things, however, were in store for him. His path was brightened, at his graduation, by an invitation from the board of trustees to the pro- fessorship of Modern Languages, for the establishment of which Madame Bowdoin had given to the college one thousand dollars. The invitation was coupled with a permission to spend three years in preparation, by residence abroad. It shows great confidence in his scholarly gifts, his teaching ability, and the soundness of his character, that such an invitation should be ex- tended to a young man who had yet three years to spend before he reached his majority. The invitation was accepted with delight, and after some months of delay, during which he read law in his father's office, he set sail in an ocean packet for Europe. Foreign travel was in those days far more rare than now. It was all the more a mark of distinction. For an American, it meant a widening of view, a re- lease from narrow prejudices, an inspiration to better work. The sight of medieval cathedrals and palaces made the wooden architecture of his own country seem like the card-houses of children. Painting and sculp- ture revealed to him for the first time the glories of art. Other languages and literatures showed him 2i6 Longfellow's first stay abroad both the merits and the shortcomings of his own. The poverty and oppression of vast populations roused in him a new pride and gratitude, as he compared them with the free and well-to-do life of his native land. Per- haps the most important, however, of all the benefits of a prolonged stay abroad was his introduction to the past — the past of literature, politics, and history, and to that past the acquisition of foreign languages opened the door. No young man ever entered the great European world with more of advantage than did young Long- fellow. Delicate in all his tastes, a born hater of the rough and unseemly, ambitious and industrious, drink-^ ing in knowledge at every pore, provided with letters which admitted him at once to the society of litterateurs and diplomats, with a gentle and sincere address which made friends of all who met him, he found everywhere the very teachers and helpers of whom he stood in need. Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, London, in turn, were the scene of his studies and associations. In Spain he made a bosom friend of Washington Irving ; in Italy he had confidential talks with George W. Greene, the historian, whose letters are now a chief source of information with regard to our poet's inner life. In this historian's dedication to " his friend of his " Life of General Greene," we read : "Thirty-nine years ago, this month of April, you and I were together at Naples. . . We were young then, with life all before us; and in the midst of the records of a great past our thoughts would still turn to our own future. . . One day — I shall never forget it — we returned at sunset from a long after- noon amid the statues and relics of the Museo Bourbonico. . . We went up to the flat roof of the house, where, as we LONGFELLOW AS A TfiACllER 21^ walked, we could look down into the crowded street and out upon the wonderful bay and across to Ischia and Capri and Sorrento, and over the housetops and villas and vineyards to Vesuvius. . . And over all, with a thrill like that of solemn music, fell the splendor of the Italian sunset. We talked and mused by turns, till the twilight deepened and the stars came forth to mingle their mysterious influences with the overmas- tering magic of the scene. It was then that you unfolded to me your plans of life, and showed me from what * deep cis- terns' you had already learned to draw. From that day, the office of literature took a new place in my thoughts. I felt its forming power as I had never felt it before." Three years of this wandering yet busy life made Longfellow a new man. Softened and enlarged in spirit, he came back to his own country, full of am- bition to impart the culture which he had himself acquired. The little college became the theater of prelections and conversations in which French, Ger- man, and Italian were made to give up their treasures to American youth. He taught by example as well as by precept. He combined graciousness and dig- nity, a cheerful familiarity and serious intent to teach. No wonder that the stiff routine of college instruction received something of a shock, and that the new pro- fessor became exceedingly popular. In that day real comradeship between teachers and students was al- most unknown. It was a great gain to have one pro- fessor who could sufficiently unbend to talk familiarly with his pupils about the things in which they were interested. Longfellow did something to introduce an improved method into American pedagogy. He was not satisfied with influencing the narrow circle of the college. Wider fields invited him. An inner impulse to literary production had long possessed Q 2i8 Longfellow's first prose work him. It had been repressed by the thought that he lacked both ideas and power to express them. Now he determined to trust his destiny and to make the ven- ture. His first impulse was to make his appeal to the public in prose, and Irving's " Sketch Book " suggested the general plan. It was in 1833, during the last of his five and a half years at Bowdoin, that he published " Outre-Mer." It crystallized what his years of travel had left in solution. The jottings of his diary fur- nished most of the material. We read " Outre-Mer " to-day with a sort of admiring curiosity ; it has interest as a chapter in the history of literature ; it would seem only an effusion of callow youth but for the occa-^ sional apparition in it of original genius. It is a medley of impressions, incidents, descriptions, and stories, with no more organic unity than that of Boc- caccio's " Tales." But Longfellow, like Milton, had dedicated himself to literature, and this was his first offering to the Muse. It showed receptiveness of no ordinary sort; but the constructive period was yet to come. Until now, his college experiences had been those of the courteous and popular schoolmaster. He looked upon his profession, he writes, " from a far nobler and more elevated point of view than many do. I take an inexpressible delight in watching the gradual dawn of intellect in the youthful mind." Little by little, however, the routine of teaching became burdensome, and he longed for greater freedom. His literary aspirations demanded more of leisure for original composition. He was forced to teach grammar, he says, when he would fain have written poems. A LONGFELLOW S FIRST GREAT SORROW 219 larger outlook, with less of drudgery, presented itself when, in December, 1834, he was invited to succeed George Ticknor as Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard. Here too, he was permitted to spend a year in preparatory study abroad, and he accepted the new position gladly. But now he did not go to Europe alone. He had married Miss Mary Storer Potter, a Portland acquaintance of his earlier years, a young lady who knew her Greek and Latin, and whose gentle and affectionate disposition combined with beauty of countenance to make her markedly attractive. The one mishap of Longfellow's second stay in foreign ports was her sad death in Rotter- dam. It was the first great sorrow of his life, and he has fitly commemorated it in his poem entitled " The Footsteps of Angels " : When the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered, To a holy, calm delight; Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlor wall; Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true-hearted. Come to visit me once more; They, the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore. Folded their pale hands so meekly, Spake with us on earth no more! 220 TURNING-POINT IN LONGFELLOw's LIFE And with them the Being Beauteous, Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me. And is now a saint in heaven. With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine. Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine. And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes. Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies. Uttered not, yet comprehended, Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from her lips of air. Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside. If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! The death of Longfellow's wife was the turning- point in his literary history. It gave him deeper views of life, and made him more original and constructive in his thinking. There is a marked difference between " Outre-Mer," published before his second European tour, and " Hyperion," printed after his return. The former has a careless if not a flippant gaiety, which often seems a mere overflow of youthful spirits. The latter is the serious attempt to depict a young man's striving after ideal excellence in thought and action. " Outre-Mer " is a chance collection of matters sepa- rately interesting, but bound together by no thread but THE RISE OF UNITARIANISM 221 that of personal adventure. '' Hyperion " is a con- nected tale; it rises to a much higher level of aspira- tion; it has a unity of conception, to which each part is subordinate and contributory. This change evinces in the author not only an intellectual but also a moral progress. Affliction has sobered and enriched him. He can now become the poet of domestic affection, and can describe joys and sorrows that are universal. To be a great poet, however, requires more than this ; only the highest truth can enable him to understand the lowest; he needs to appreciate the facts of sin and redemption ; in other words, to know human nature in its normal, and in its abnormal, relations to God. It was the old Congregational Calvinism that pre- vailed at Brunswick and that dominated the college. We must concede that the federal theology, unaccom- panied by an experience of vital union with Christ, was a theory of religion puzzling to the intellect and repugnant to the moral sense. Regarded as a merely forensic and governmental expression of historical and biological facts, it has justification; and, in the light of these, the Pauline doctrine of Scripture is comprehen- sible. But doctrine always tends to become traditional. After the religious revival under Jonathan Edwards had spent its force, there grew up a new scholasticism, which was more speculative than religious. Minor and incidental points of belief came to be insisted on, as if they were fundamental and essential to salvation. The younger generation refused to accept them. The result was the Unitarian defection. At the beginning, it might have been prevented by a greater tolerance and a less bigoted dogmatism on the part of orthodox 222 LONGFELLOW UNEVANGELICAL theologians. In the end, the movement reached its logical goal, and denial of inspiration, Trinity, and atonement, followed. Longfellow's home influences had been those of the liberal sort. Traditional doctrine was ^.Iready some- what modified in the ministrations of the Portland pulpit, and his father had succeeded in securing some changes in the church's creed. Above all, that creed was interpreted by the Christlike lives of his father and his mother. At Bowdoin College, he was brought for the first time into an atmosphere of traditional orthodoxy, yet at the same time an atmosphere of in- quiry. The young intellect of that day asked reasons for its faith. The minutiae of theology did not interest our eager student. He lacked as yet the inner experi- ence that would make such questions absorbing. A sort of religious indifference took possession of him. His attendance at religious services became somewhat perfunctory. He longed for a more mild and ethical preaching; and when a Unitarian church was organ- ized at Brunswick, he gave it whatever support lay within his power. There is little doubt that his en- thusiastic willingness to. accept a Harvard professor- ship was to some extent influenced by his desire to emerge into a freer theological, as well as a freer in- tellectual, field. From this time, Longfellow was an avowed Unitarian. In his Inaugural Address at Bowdoin, he had given utterance to a far-reaching truth, in his characteriza- tion of the work he hoped to do. He perceived the religious bearings of that work, and spoke of the feel- ing that prompted it: LONGFELLOW A CHRISTIAN POET 222^ It is this religious feeling, — this changing of the finite for the infinite, — this grasping after the invisible things of another and a higher world, — which marks the spirit of modern litera- ture. What he thought that " religious feeling " to be, seems indicated in one of his early letters : Human systems have done much to deaden the true spirit of devotion and to render religion merely speculative. Would it not be better for mankind if we should consider it as a cheerful and social companion, given us to go through life with us from childhood to the grave, and to make us hap- pier here as well as hereafter; and not as a stern and chid- ing taskmaster, to whom we must cling at last through mere despair, because we have nothing else on earth to which we can cling? I love that view of Christianity which sets it in the light of a cheerful, kind-hearted friend, and which gives its thoughts a noble and a liberal turn. The doctrines of men have long been taught as the doctrines of an infinitely higher authority, and many have been led to think that faith without works is an active and saving principle. Longfellow was by nature and by education a Pela- gian. The problem of moral evil never seriously vexed him. Born and nurtured amid peaceful and moral surroundings, with a quiet and studious disposition, gentle and social in his ways, he never knew any deep conviction of sin, never felt the need of an atoning Saviour, never shrank from the holiness of God. Love, compassion, pity — these divine attributes seemed to him all-inclusive. That God is righteous, and that man is fallen, never made him tremble. The self-condem- nation of Augustine, and his ecstatic praise for re- demption, had no place in his experience. And yet, in a certain unevangelical way, he was a Christian poet. One of his earliest ambitions was that of writ- 224 ing a poem, the title of which should be " Christus," and in which apostolic, medieval, and modern Chris- tianity should be exhibited in one great trilogy. This ambition haunted him for nearly half a century, but was not realized until 1873. The translation of Dante's " Divina Comedia " is another indication that our poet was in love with Christian themes. He never reached Dante's heights, because he had never sounded Dante's depths. It was only the superficial aspects of Chris- tianity which he described. He did not understand the plan of God; but he did accept its results. Let us be thankful that, even so, he could give comfort to multitudes of God's children. I have said that the death of Mrs. Longfellow, in the midst of his preparation abroad for his work at Harvard, was the turning-point in his career. From this time his literary activity is constructive and orig- inal. " Kavanagh " is an idyl, full of poetic mate- rial, but with so little of plot and with so much of sen- timent, that novel-writing seems beyond our author's powers. Its motto, however, taken from Shakespeare, is significant : " The flighty purpose never is o'ertook Unless the deed go with it." This intimates that the writer is now bent on actual achievement. " Hyperion," though printed before " Kavanagh," is really his last work of importance in prose. Its motto is suggested by his recent affliction : Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to 22'' meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart. These exercises in prose show industry and learning, together with the delicacy and skill of a literary artist, but they were only preparatory studies. Longfellow's real work was yet to come. On his second European journey, the Rhine, Heidel- berg, Switzerland, Paris, in succession, diverted him; but in 1836, after fifteen months of travel, he returned to Cambridge, where he taught for the next seventeen years, and where he lived until his death in 1882. With his residence in Cambridge began a new period in his history. He seems now to have discovered his vocation, and to have devoted to it all his powers. It was the vocation of the poet. Its public inaugura- tion consisted in the printing of his first book of poems, " The Voices of the Night." It is doubtful whether any other work of a poetical sort has ever had so im- mediate recognition and success, or so great an in- fluence in the shaping of future literary production, in America at least, as had this first venture of Longfel- low. " A Psalm of Life " became the quickener of ten thousand youthful hearts, who thereafter repeated to themselves the poet's words of courage : Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. 226 INFLUENCE OF LONGFELLOW 's POEMS Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. These poems are soothing as well as inspiring. Long labor has made them simple. They are faultless in point of taste. They appeal not only to the heroic, but also to the pathetic, elements of human nature. Some of them are the author's efforts to relieve his own deep depression, and they naturally minister com- fort to others. They are not distinctly Christian poems, but they are by-products of Christianity, and we cannot imagine them as written in ante-Christian times. We may apply to them Longfellow's own words in " The Day is Done " : Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care. And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. From this time forward our poet's life was one of almost uninterrupted prosperity and of ever-increasing fame. His second marriage, to Frances Elizabeth Appleton, soon put him in possession of the Craigie AMERICAS TRULY NATIONAL POET 227 House, the noblest mansion in Cambridge, the former headquarters of General George Washington at the beginning of the Revolutionary war. Here he dis- pensed a liberal hospitality. He entertained, and was entertained. The social side of his nature was quick- ened, and he was inspired to literary production. He was ready for his task; and, though somewhat handi- capped by his college duties, he managed to derive even from them new stimulus and inspiration. He came gradually to be recognized as our most representative American poet; and that, because he combined the broadest literary outlook with the deepest knowledge of the human heart. If we are asked to name the chief poet of America, we must answer that Longfellow is our poet most truly national; and this verdict is ren- dered not only by Americans, but by the literary world at large. This place in the world's esteem he won by right ; because, with all his knowledge of foreign litera- tures and authors, he avoided the sentimentality of European romanticism, while at the same time he glori- fied the sweet and tender instincts of human nature. Culture had broadened his views of life, but he had learned that the sources of true poetry are not without, but within. We may almost say that the last stanza of the " Prelude," in this first published book of poetry, lays down the program of his future life : "Look, then, into thine heart, and write! Yes, into Life's deep stream! All forms of sorrow and delight, All solemn Voices of the Night, That can soothe thee, or affright, — Be these henceforth thy theme!" 228 DEATH OF LONGFELLOW's SECOND WIFE It is a long stride forward, but I must here take account of the second great sorrow of Longfellow's life. After eighteen years of happy wedlock, his beau- tiful and accomplished wife met with an agonizing death. She had been sealing up in separate packages the clippings of her children's hair, when a lighted match fell to the floor and set her dress on fire. Her husband came to her relief, and was himself severely burned. His help was vain ; she died next day ; he was left in a distress so deep, that for months he could not speak of it; the effect of it indeed never left him; it colored all his views of life. To one who exhorted him to " bear his cross," he replied, " Yes, but what if one be stretched upon it! " And to George William Curtis he made answer : " I can write no word. God's will be done! I am too utterly wretched and over- whelmed, — to the eyes of others, outwardly, calm ; but inwardly, bleeding to death." In his journal, many days after, he added these lines of Tennyson : "Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace; Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll.'* "Known and unknown, human, divine; Sweet human hand and lips and eye; Dear heavenly friend that canst not die; Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine." Like Bryant, Longfellow strove to console himself by translating one of the great poets, choosing Dante. The first sonnet prefixed to this work, which was com- pleted in 1866, contains the suggestive words: LONGFELLOW S PRODUCTIVE YEARS 229 I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate. It was a long time before he plucked up courage to write any verses of his own. Among the verses then written, there was found in a portfolio after his death, the poem entitled " The Cross of Snow " ; and that poem is the best proof of his depth of feeling, and at the same time his inability, with all his gifts of ex- pression, to put that feeling into words: In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face — the face of one long dead — Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died. The years that intervened between these two great sorrows, the years from 1843 to 1861, were our poet's most productive years. Providence had favored him with every advantage and facility. He had passed from adolescence to manhood; he had mastered the languages and literatures of Europe; he was the idol of a notable literary circle; Agassiz, Hawthorne, Hil- lard, Felton, Sumner, Prescott, were his friends; in fact, association with them was so close, that there was 2^6 " TttE Village blacksmith *' talk of a '' Mutual Admiration Society " ; and, when his work was reviewed by one of its members, a critic wrote after its title, " Insured in The Mutual." But Longfellow was never led astray, either by criticism or by applause. He was an industrious and conscientious workman, and even the slightest of his poems bore marks of scrupulous care and artistic skill. A stanza of " The Village Blacksmith " well expresses the spirit of his work : Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. During this comparatively youthful period, Long- fellow gave to the w.orld the best fruits of his brain and heart. No products of his later years, for purely poetic merit, surpass " Excelsior," " The Belfry of Bruges," " The Rainy Day," and " Mezzo Cammin." This last sonnet, written at Boppard on the Rhine in 1842, just before leaving for home, so nobly expresses the spirit of his life, that I cannot refrain from quot- ing it : Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled The aspiration of my youth, to build Some tower of song with lofty parapet. Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret Of restless passions that would not be stilled, But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past " EVANGELINE " 23 1 Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights, — A city in the twilight dim and vast, With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights, — And hear above me on the autumnal blast The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights. Here is true poetry, and with it a modesty equal to ihat of the youthful Milton. Was this lofty ambition ever realized? With all our admiration for Long- fellow's gifts, we must hold that he was most success- ful in his shorter poems, and that he lacked the genius to construct an epic. His technical skill increased with years, but his creative power waned. Nor was he a dramatic poet. I do not now have in mind " The Spanish Student," which is a comparatively juvenile production, with romantic reminiscences of Byron and of Goethe, though it lacks the sentiment of the one and the fire of the other. I refer to such works as " Evan- geline," " Hiawatha," " The Courtship of Miles Stand- ish," and most of all, to what Longfellow intended to make the great and final work of his life, his poem entitled " Christus." Let me say a word of each of these in succession. " Evangeline " is an idealization of true love, with its patience and faithfulness. The Acadian maiden, separated from her lover on their marriage day, seeks him for years, only to find him at last an old man dying in a hospital : Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. 2Z'2 " THE SONG OF HIAWATHA " Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. " Evangeline " is probably the most popular of our poet's works. It stirs deep founts of feeling, and the pathos of the story is undeniable. Hawthorne gave Longfellow the theme, but our poet worked it out in verse. The hexameter has never been better domes- ticated in English. Goethe's " Hermann and Doro- thea " is its only poetical rival, and the work of Goethe is inferior in its direct appeal to the heart. The power of "Evangeline " is proved by an ever-mcreasing in- flux of pilgrims into Nova Scotia, and an ever-increas-~ ing interest in the haunts of Gabriel and Evangeline. Grand-Pre and the Basin of Minas are consecrated localities. Though the " forest primeval " has now disappeared, the traveler still imagines the scene as it was two centuries ago, and repeats to himself the words with which the poet begins his story : This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight. Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. " The Song of Hiawatha," more than any other work of literature, more even than the novels of Cooper, preserves to us the spirit and the life of the American Indian. The Finnish poem of " Kalevala " suggested the meter, and Schoolcraft's *' Algic Re- searches " furnished most of the legends. There is a religious element in the story, which shows the bent of Longfellow's mind in matters of theology, and which we must not fail to take account of. In his " Introduction," he makes appeal to the reader: Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not. That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness. Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened; — Listen to this simple story, To this Song of Hiawatha! The story of Hiawatha's Childhood, his Fasting, his Friends, his Sailing, his Fishing, his Wooing, his Wedding-feast, of the Ghosts, the Famine, the White Man's Foot, and of Hiawatha's Departure, is an ideal- ized picture of Indian life and Indian religion. The poet has contradicted the dreadful doctrine that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and has taught us anew that " in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is acceptable unto him " : Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest- Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter. R 234 THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH " " The Courtship of Miles Standish " is a kind of Puritan pastoral, the scene of which is laid, as the poem relates, " In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth, the land of the Pilgrims." John Alden undertakes to win the heart of Priscilla for Miles Standish, although John himself loves her, and only out of loyalty to his friend has undertaken to speak for another : But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes overrunning with laughter. Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" And so, all unexpectedly, John Alden wins his bride, and takes her to his home. The hard life of the Pil- grims is seen to have had its sunshine as well as its shadows : Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. All these longer poems fail to reach the highest mark, by reason of their very profuseness and facility. There is in them too much of merely superficial out- flow. They lack intensity and condensation. This is particularly true in that poem which Longfellow wished to be his greatest — the poem entitled " Chris- tus." It was to be an idealized history of Christianity, '' CHRISTUS " 235 ill apostolic, medieval, and modern times, and was to illustrate successively the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The apostolic portion of the work is called "The Divine Tragedy." This is little more than a somewhat commonplace versification of the story of the Gospels. The second part is entitled " The Golden Legend." It aims to show that, through the darkness of the Middle Ages, there ran a stream of faith, which preserved the apostolic tradition. The third part is called " The New England Tragedies," and this pre- sents to us Puritans and Quakers, as still aiming to subdue the world, and to bring in the kingdom of God. The conception is noble, and the execution is often interesting. Yet we must confess that our atten- tion sometimes flags. No paraphrase, whether metrical or prosaic, can improve upon the simple narrative of the Gospels. *' The Golden Legend " is an imitation, possibly unconscious, of the second part of Goethe's " Faust," with its symbolic and supernatural para- phernalia^ — a diffuse and dreary application of the Christian " Legend " to actual life. " The New Eng- land Tragedies " come nearest to reality, and seem the only permanently valuable part of the lengthy poem. The fundamental defect in this trilogy is its in- sufficient estimate of Jesus Christ. He is the gentle and sympathizing friend, the model of virtue, the worker of wonders, yes, even the man of sorrows ; but he is not what the New Testament represents him to be — Immanuel, God with us, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. His preexistence, incarnation, atonement, and omnipresence with his people, are ignored. One might read " Christus " 22i(> DEFECTS OF LONCEELLOW^S THEOLOGY from beginning to end, and never learn that it is he through whom alone God is revealed, and that only he is the medium through whom God creates, upholds, and redeems. The result is that Christianity is only a '' Golden Legend," and there is no personal and pres- ent Christ in Christian history. A mythological atmos- phere envelops the whole story, and it seems only a poet's dream. The fortitude and faith of Puritan and Quaker have no sufficient justification. Our poet's plan is too large for his material. His " Christus " is in- deed a '' Mystery " ; for it gives no real explanation of Christianity, or of its permanence and progress in the world. Michelangelo had more insight into the secret, when he painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that majestic figure of the Creator in human form, and filled the whole end of that same chapel with the pic- ture of Christ's Final Judgment. And Jonathan Ed- wards had greater insight still, when he planned a '' History of Redemption," which began with eternity past, and concluded with eternity to come, but in which Christ was the only Revealer of God, the only Lord and King. Longfellow had neither the genius, nor the faith, of Michelangelo or of Jonathan Edwards. His insuf- ficient estimate of Jesus Christ was the logical conse- quence of his ignorance of the holiness of God, and of the deep damnation of human sin. Sin to him is a mis- fortune and a disease, but never guilt and ruin. The green apple needs only sunshine and rain to ripen it, for there is no worm at the heart. There needs no divine Saviour to redeem, no suffering of the Son of God to reveal the heart of the Father or to win the hearts of LONGFELLOW S SHORTER POEMS 237 men. The accusations of conscience and the fearful looking for of judgment are illusions of the unenlight- ened mind. Little sin means a belittled Christ; and of this beHttled Christ Longfellow is the apostle. Let us remember that the apostles of old were once in Longfellow's state of mind, and even in that state of mind did some preaching of the gospel. They were sent out on a trial-mission, before the resurrection and before Pentecost. They were Christians of an infantile sort, and they had learned some lessons in Christ's kindergarten. In spite of its defects, their message was good news, and it brought comfort to many hearts. So we are thankful for the elements of truth in the poetry of Longfellow, and we doubt not that his poetry has blessed the world. How much greater would have been its power, if he had grasped the truth that Christ is God manifest in the flesh, the atoning and omnipresent Saviour, the guiding force in human history, the arbiter of human destinies, before whom every knee in heaven and earth shall bow ! We betake ourselves to Longfellow's shorter poems for a more detailed account of his theology. His " Hymn for My Brother's Ordination " seems, at first sight, to be an expression of the common Christian faith : Christ to the young man said: " Yet one thing more- If thou wouldst perfect be, Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, And come and follow me!" Within this temple Christ again, unseen, Those sacred words hath said And his invisible hands to-day have been Laid on a young man's head. 238 LONGFELLOW NEITHER SKEPTIC NOR MYSTIC And evermore beside him on his way The unseen Christ shall move, That he may lean upon his arm and say, "Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?" Beside him at the marriage feast shall be. To make the scene more fair; Beside him in the dark Gethsemane Of pain and midnight prayer. O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on! This is not a prayer to Christ nor an assurance of his personal presence. It is rather an imaginative con- cession to traditional Christian feeling. Longfellow was no critic and no skeptic. He had no sympathy with agnosticism. His bent was rather toward the mystical element in Christianity. But the lack of an inward experience of the power of sin made all his religious conceptions ideal and poetical, rather than definite and practical. Whatever was sweet and beau- tiful pleased him, but he took no particular care to in- vestigate its scientific value. He could appropriate, for purposes of poetry, much of the gospel idea of union with Christ, although he would have been un- willing to grant that this Christ is anything more than are other dear friends who have been long de- parted, but who, as we love to think, are still invisibly ministering to our good. He was as far from the true Christian mysticism as he was from sheer agnosticism. We may well compare his " Hymn for my Brother's Ordination " with the opening lines of Tennyson's " In LONGFELLOW TENDS TO PAGAN VIEWS 239 Memoriam," in which are asserted so strongly a faith in Christ's Creatorship and Lordship in the Universe, his possession of the Truth of which human philoso- phies are only fitful gleams, and his rightful claim to the absolute submission of every human will : ** Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove; "Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. " Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou. Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. " Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee. And thou, O Lord, art more than they." Longfellow could never have subscribed to this utter- ance, and still less could he have taken upon his lips the sublime confession of the apostle Paul : " It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.'' Paul believed in Christ's deity and atonement, as Longfellow did not. Indeed, we mark a growing tendency toward a pagan view of the world and of religious things, as the years 240 "the masque of pandora" go on. ^ German influences were strong, and to some extent Goethe was the poet's model. Unevangelical theology, in cutting loose from Christ's control, tends ever to a liberalism which denies special revelation, and regards Christianity as only one of many natural re- ligions, no one of which has proper claim to inspira- tion or supremacy. The classical mythology becomes even more satisfying, to this abnormal taste, than are the definite and authoritative demands of a historic revelation. " The Masque of Pandora " is the heathen version of the Fall of Man. When Pandora is tempted to open the box in which are imprisoned all the future ills of humanity, she speaks to her own heart : No one sees me, Save the all-seeing Gods, who, knowing good And knowing evil, have created me Such as I am, and filled me with desire Of knowing good and evil like themselves. I hesitate no longer. Weal or woe, Or life or death, the moment shall decide. She lifts the lid, and the evil is done : Fever of the heart and brain, Sorrow, pestilence, and pain, Moans of anguish, maniac laughter, All the evils that hereafter Shall afflict and vex mankind, All into the air have risen From the chambers of their prison; Only Hope remains behind. Now Pandora is a prey to anguish and to fear. Con- science witnesses against her, and the Eumenides, the Furies, threaten. Pandora resigns herself to their chas- tisement : *' THE MASQUE OF PANDORA " 24I Me let them punish. Only through punishment of our evil deeds, Only through suffering, are we reconciled To the immortal Gods and to ourselves. But the Eumenides reply : Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Evangelical theology does not grant that God created men such as they now are, or that he ** filled them with desire of knowing good and evil like himself." It holds that this longing for that which is forbidden is the consequence and the penalty of man's free choice to disobey, instead of letting God's will rule within him. And evangelical theology does not grant that suffering the punishment of his evil deeds of itself reconciles man either to God or to himself. There must be also God's own suffering on man's account, and the renewing of man's spirit by the Spirit of God. If by " Helios," in this poem, is meant " the Sun of Righteousness," Jesus Christ, we may subscribe to its last stanza, and give it a Christian interpretation : Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won. And the new life begun. Kindled with nobler passions and desires. " Hermes Trismegistus " seems to be a confession that the poet despaired of any solution of the mysteries of existence, and that his final attitude was that of the 242 agnostic. Only Christ holds in his girdle the key to those mysteries, and to call him only a human being like ourselves is to leave ourselves in mental and moral darkness. This poem of " Hermes Trismegistus " is one of the last which our poet wrote, and it shows that he needed greater light. His *' Hermes " is apparently identical with himself : By the Nile I see him wandering, Pausing now and then, On the mystic union pondering Between gods and men; Half believing, wholly feeling, With supreme delight, How the gods, themselves concealing, Lift men to their height. Who shall call his dreams fallacious? Who has searched or sought All the unexplored and spacious Universe of thought? Who, in his own skill confiding, Shall with rule and line Mark the border-land dividing Human and divine? Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately Found I in the vast. Weed-encumbered, sombre, stately, Grave-yard of the Past; And a presence moved before me On that gloomy shore. As a waft of wind, that o'er me Breathed, and was no more. Longfellow's faith was simply a faith in the his- toric value of Christ's human example. This is a minor point in Christian doctrine, yet it is an essential 243 point, and such faith as this, though fragmentary, may have great influence over Hfe and conduct. I see the influence of it in our poet's own Hfe, and in his writing. Without this faith, I doubt whether his " Poems on Slavery " could ever have been written. They came short of the fire and fury which abolitionists like Gar- rison demanded. But they appealed to the Christian conscience on behalf of the oppressed, and their very calmness and sympathy moved many who, like Sum- ner, could not be revolutionists. It is almost amusing to remember that Whittier urged Longfellow to be a candidate for Congress, as he himself once proposed to be. The poet declined, with the words : " Partisan warfare becomes too violent, too vindictive, for my taste." He could praise Channing's denunciations of slavery, and his prophecies of its downfall, and could entreat him to Go on, until this land revokes The old and chartered Lie, The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes Insult humanity. But he himself could better serve the cause by such pathetic verses as those in which he describes the sell- ing to a slave-dealer, by her own father, of " The Quadroon Girl " : His heart within him was at strife With such accursed gains: For he knew whose passions gave her life, Whose blood ran in her veins. But the voice of nature was too weak; He took the glittering gold! Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek, Her hands as icy cold. 244 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP The Slaver led her from the door, He led her by the hand, To be his slave and paramour In a strange and distant land. If Whittier was our poet of Liberty, Longfellow was our poet of Union. In the days that were to come, it was quite as important that national solidarity should be preserved, as that freedom should be given to the slave. No utterance in our literature has had more lasting influence than Longfellow's poem, " The Build- ing of the Ship." The closing stanza of it is one of his noblest : Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel. What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, *Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail. And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar. In spite of false lights on the shore. Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearis, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. Are all with thee, — are all with thee! And to this chant in praise of Union must be added his prophecy of universal Peace. " The Arsenal at LONGFELLOW THE POET OP UNIVERSAL PEACE ^45 Springfield " has ever since been quoted by those who are " warHke against war " : Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn,, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace! " Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. The peace which Longfellow desired was not simply peace within our own borders. It was world-wide and universal peace. He was not, and he did not desire to be, a merely national poet. In " Kavanagh " he said : Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but univer- sality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is univer- sal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches wave in unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language to all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. In this somewhat florid and rather obscure utterance of his youth, Longfellow wisely held that the true poet appeals to the universal instincts of humanity. He brings men back to nature. But can Art redeem? There are poems in which our poet seems to intimate this, and so, to magnify his office. " Keramos " gives us his conception of Art : Art Is the child of. Nature; yes. Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, 246 Longfellow's genius representative : Her aspect and her attitude; All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature. Never man, As artist or as artisan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart, or please. Or satisfy our nobler needs. As he who sets his willing feet In Nature's footprints, light and fleet. And follows fearless where she leads. To this we reply that our true nature can be under- stood and interpreted only when we recognize our sin, and accept God's remedy for sin in Christ. The lack of this fundamental knowledge makes Longfellow's poetry comparatively weak and superficial. He deals with results, but not with causes. His Christianity has no Cross of divine sacrifice, and so furnishes no refuge for the guilty, and no dynamic for the saved. He has not grappled with the deepest problems, and he cannot stir the deepest emotions. Creative power in the poet is inseparable from religious experience; Longfellow's genius therefore is representative rather than creative ; he cannot be ranked with the great poets of all time ; he must be counted only the chief sweet singer of America. The poem entitled " Michael Angelo " is interesting, in this connection, and that for two reasons. It is a posthumous work, found in the author's desk after his decease, and it is almost autobiographical. It cer- 247 tainly gives us his latest views with regard to the phi- losophy of art in general, and by inference, the philos- ophy of poetry in particular. There are intimations in it that our poet realized the nearness of his end, and was eager to improve every passing hour. We can hear him speaking, in the words he puts into the mouth of the great painter, sculptor, and architect, as he meditates upon the glories of old Rome: Malaria? Yes, malaria of the mind, Out of this tomb of the majestic Past; The fever to accomplish some great work That will not let us sleep. I must go on Until I die. How will men speak of me when I am gone. When all this colorless, sad life is ended, And I am dust? They will remember only The wrinkled forehead, the marred countenance, The rudeness of my speech, and my rough manners, And never dream that underneath them all There was a woman's heart of tenderness; They will not know the secret of my life. Locked up in silence, or but vaguely hinted In uncouth rhymes, that may perchance survive Some little space in memories of men! Each one performs his life-work, and then leaves it; Those that come after him will estimate His influence on the age in which he lived. Not events Exasperate me, but the funest conclusions I draw from these events; the sure decline Of art, and all the meaning of that word; All that embellishes and sweetens life, And lifts it from the level of low cares Into the purer atmosphere of beauty. 248 In the " Dedication " to this poem, I find one of the best statements of Longfellow's conception of his own work. He was rebuilding the ruins of a noble past, and reviving for his own generation the beauty and the pathos that had stirred the hearts of men in olden time. This particular sonnet has a literary charm which ranks our poet among the most finished workmen of the world, and for that reason also I take pleasure in quoting it at length: Nothing that is shall perish utterly, But perish only to revive again In other forms, as clouds restore in rain The exhalations of the land and sea. Men build their houses from the masonry Of ruined tombs; the passion and the pain Of hearts, that long have ceased to beat, remain To throb in hearts that are, or are to be. So from old chronicles, where sleep in dust Names that once filled the world with trumpet tones, I build this verse; and flowers of song have thrust Their roots among the loose disjointed stones. Which to this end I fashion as I must. Quickened are they that touch the Prophet's bones. " The faith in the Ideal," of which Longfellow speaks in this poem, was the faith that led him on. The words of his " Michael Angelo," modest as they are, seem to express his own modest feeling, as he looked back to his working days: Pleasantly Come back to me the days when, as a youth, I walked with Ghirlandajo in the gardens Of Medici, and saw the antique statues, The forms august of gods and godlike men. And the great world of art revealed itself LONGFELLOW AND TENNYSON 249 To my young eyes. Then all that man hath done Seemed possible to me. Alas! how little Of all I dreamed of has my hand achieved! In many ways, " Michael Angelo " is the most mature work of the poet, although it lacks the spon- taneity and simplicity of his youth. In learning and in thought, he was never so well equipped as when he wrote this poem. After eighteen years of service in his chair at Harvard, he had resigned his professor- ship, and had devoted himself exclusively to poetry. Europe as well as America had come to recognize Tennyson and himself as the two greatest poets of the nineteenth century. England and the United States were united by a new tie, when Longfellow's name became a household word in both countries. He achieved this fame and influence by being, not provin- cial in his sympathies, but universal. I find the proof of this in his generous estimate of the works of others, and specially in the noble tribute which he renders to Tennyson, his only rival in the suffrages of the Eng- lish-speaking world : Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine; Not as a knight, who on the listed field Of tourney touched his adversary's shield In token of defiance, but in sign Of homage to the mastery, which is thine, In English song; nor will I keep concealed And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed. My admiration for thy verse divine. Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance, For thy allegiance to the poet's art. S 250 Longfellow's kindly spirit Longfellow's kindly spirit was shown in his recep- tion of criticism. There was much to try a vain or rancorous soul. " Hiawatha " was easily parodied, and its hero was dubbed " Milgenwatha." Twice our poet was accused of plagiarism ; once for having stolen the tale of " Martin Franc, or the Monk of St. An- thony," from George Colman's " Knight and Friar " ; and again by Edgar Allan Poe, for having passed off a ballad of Motherwell, " The Bonnie George Camp- bell," as his own translation from the German. Our author replied to the first accusation that he had, with- out knowledge of Colman's work, simply used the same material that Colman himself had used. To the sec- ond accusation, accompanied by Poe's declaration that " Longfellow will steal, though perhaps he cannot help it," he replied that he had found the ballad in a Ger- man collection, with no indication of its being a trans- lation, and that he had simply put it into English, with- out claiming authorship. Poe was informed of his error, but he never made reparation. I am specially interested in our poet's relations with Emerson. The two were never intimate, though they were never on unfriendly terms. Longfellow could not sympathize with Emerson's transcendentalism, or with the disjointedness of his thinking. He speaks of Emerson's " Essays," as " full of prose poetry, mag- nificent absurdities, and simple truths." " But it is impossible," he adds, " to see any connection in the ideas." In his diary he writes: Hear Emerson's lecture on Holiness, which he defines to be "the breath of the Soul of the world." This lecture is a great bugbear to many pious, feeble souls. Not exactly 251 comprehending it (and who does?) they seem to be sitting in the shadow of some awful atheism or other. . . This eve- ning Emerson lectured on the "Affections"; a good lecture. He mistakes his power somewhat, and at times speaks in oracles, darkly. He is vastly more of a poet than a philoso- pher. Received from Emerson a copy of his Poems. F. read it to me all the evening and until late at night. It gave us the keenest pleasure; though many of the pieces present themselves Sphinxlike, and, " struggling to get free their hinder-parts," offer a very bold front and challenge your answer. Throughout the volume, through the golden mist and sublimation of fancy, gleam bright veins of purest poetry, like rivers running through meadows. Truly a rare volume; with many exquisite poems in it, among which I should cull out " Monadnock," " Threnody," " The Humble-Bee," as con- taining much of the quintessence of poetry. Longfellow was a man of deep feeling, but he did not wear his heart on his sleeve. Affectionate and gentle in his nature, he could not be demonstrative about the things that touched him most. One of the most pathetic experiences of his life was the loss of his little daughter Fanny. He had comforted himself with the hymn : Give to the winds thy fears; Hope, and be undismayed; God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears; God shall lift up thy head. But after a day of agony, in which the child lay motion- less, with only a little moan now and then, At half past four this afternoon she died. F. and M. sat with me by her bedside. Her breathing grew fainter, fainter, then ceased without a sigh, without a flutter, — perfectly quiet, perfectly painless. The sweetest expression was on her face. 252 SCANTY MATERIAL FOR LONGFELLOW's THEOLOGY The room was full of angels where she lay; And when they had departed she was gone. And a full month after, he writes in his diary: I feel very sad to-day. I miss very much my dear little Fanny. An inappeasable longing to see her comes over me at times, which I can hardly control. It is not to be expected that we should find, either in his prose or in his poetry, any very definite state- ments of his theological or religious beliefs. He was no dogmatist — he rather doubted the possibility of expressing the mysterious relations of the finite spirit with the infinite Spirit from whom it came, and in whom it lives. If he had had a more pronounced be- lief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, or had had a more profound Christian experience, he could have left to us more material from which to construct his theo- logical system. Both Bryant and Whittier have given us many hymns for our Christian worship. Longfel- low is not so prolific. But who can fail to recognize the Christian spirit of his early poem, " Blind Bar- timeus " ? Blind Bartimeus at the gates Of Jericho in darkness waits; He hears the crowd; — he hears a breath Say, "It is Christ of Nazareth!" And calls, in tones of agony, '/lyffoD, iXifjffdv fie / The thronging multitudes increase; Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace! But still, above the noisy CxOwd, The beggar's cry is shrill and loud; Until they say, " He calleth thee! " Odpffei ; lyeipaiy 4*wvtl ffs / CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LONGFELLOW S POEMS 253 Then saith the Christ, as silent stands The crowd, " What wilt thou at my hands? " And he replies, " Oh, give me light! Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight!" And Jesus answers, "T-Kaye • '^H TZiCTL^S (TOO ffiffWxi (T£ / Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, In darkness and in misery. Recall those mighty Voices Three, 'iTjffoUy mrjffov fie / Odpffst, eystpaij vizaye / 'H Ttiart'S