i lohn G. Whittier 
 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
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JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
 
The Qdakbr of the olden time !— 
 
 How CALM AND FIRM AND TRUE, 
 
 Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 
 
 He walked the dark earth through. 
 The lust of power, the love of gain, 
 
 The thousand lures of sin 
 Around him, had no power to stain 
 
 The purity within. 
 With that deep insight which detects 
 
 All great things in the small, 
 And knows how each man's life affects 
 
 THE spiritual LIFE OF ALL, 
 
 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. 
 He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 
 
 That nothing stands alone. 
 That whoso gives the motive, makes 
 
 His brother's sin his own. 
 And pausing not for doubtful choice 
 
 Of evils great or small. 
 He listened to that inward voice 
 Which called away from all. 
 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 beak, 
 And love and reverent fear to make 
 Our daily lives a prayer! 
 
John G.Whittier 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRED WHITTEN. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 EDWARD HICKS, Je., 
 
 14, BisHOPSGATE Without, and 2, Amen Corner. 
 1892. 
 
MAII^ LIBKA^^' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PA(iE. 
 
 I. NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY - - - - 1 
 
 II. THE OLD HOME 12 
 
 III. THE YOUNG IDEA . .... 34 
 
 IV. THE DEW OF YOUTH 58 
 
 V. THROUGH THE FIRE ----- 76 
 
 VI. CONSCIOUS POWER ----- 102 
 
 VII. THE MASTER YEARS 120 
 
 VIII. SUNDOWN - 147 
 
 
JOHNG.WHITTIER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. 
 
 "And let us hope, as well we can, 
 That the silent angel who garners man 
 May find some grain as of old he found 
 In the human cornfield ripe and sound. 
 And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own 
 The precious seed by the fathers sown ! " 
 
 "The Prophecy op Samuel Sewall.' 
 
 "The firm endurance of suffering by the martyrs of 
 conscience, if it be rightly contemplated, is the most con- 
 solatory spectacle in the crowded life of man .... 
 of all destinies it is that which most exalts the sect or 
 party whom it visits, and bestows on their story an un- 
 dying command over the hearts of their fellow men." 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh. 
 
 mHE story of John Greenleaf Whittier falls 
 
 into a simple but glowing narrative, and the 
 
 chief concern of the writer is that he may 
 
 not fail in that reverent handling due to the 
 
2 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 finished labour and sorrows of a good man. Our 
 poet's entreaty for the balm of men's forget- 
 fulness cannot be set aside without hesitation, 
 although gently set aside it must be for the 
 sake of the human family from which he has 
 been withdrawn — 
 
 living friends who love me, 
 
 dear ones gone above me, 
 Careless of other fame 
 
 1 leave to you my name. 
 Hide it from idle praises, 
 Save it from evil phrases ; 
 Why, when dear lips that spake it 
 Are dumb, should strangers wake it ? 
 
 The ancestry of Whittier is interesting. The 
 first member of his family who sought a home in 
 America was Thomas Whittier, who, in 1638, took 
 his passage to Boston, Mass., in the " Confidence," 
 the vessel sailing from Southampton under one 
 John Jobson. Thomas Whittier was but a youth 
 of eighteen when he adventurously left the 
 old country, but he fortunately had companion- 
 ship in a family of the name of Rolfe, with which 
 he subsequently became connected by marriage. 
 
NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. 3 
 
 In 1645 we find him settled with his bride 
 at Salisbury, a small place near the mouth of 
 the Merrimac River, He also lived at New- 
 bury, and then, in 1648, came to live at 
 Haverhill, eleven miles south-west of Salisbury. 
 The local records reveal the curious fact that 
 Thomas Whittier brought with his other goods 
 and chattels the first hive of bees known to 
 the settlement, and a clever writer has seen in 
 the circumstance a fancied kinship with the story 
 of the bees swarming about the baby lips of 
 Pindar, sweetest of Greek, as Whittier was 
 of American poets. Thomas Whittier lived long 
 and in good report ; he died in 1696, and his wife 
 in 1710. Ten out of eleven children survived their 
 parents, and it was from the youngest, Joseph, 
 the poet had his descent. Joseph Whittier first 
 established the family connection with Quakerism 
 by marrying, in 1694, the year in which George 
 Fox's Journal was printed in London, Mary, 
 daughter of Joseph Peasley. His death took 
 place in 1739, and of his nine children it was 
 again the youngest who became the ancestor of 
 
4 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the poet. Joseph Whittier, the younger, married 
 Sarah Greenleaf, of Newbury. Their tenth child, 
 John, married in 1804, Abigail Hussey, of 
 Somersworth, and the children of this union 
 were Mary ; John Greenleaf (born Dec. 17, 1807) ; 
 Matthew Franklin ; and Elizabeth Hussey. 
 
 Such being the poet's ancestry, some 
 slight account of the conditions under which 
 these worthies lived will leave us free to 
 enter on the story of the man whose inborn 
 poetic fire we shall perhaps find to have been 
 kindled well nigh at the stake itself. Scarcely 
 in history is there a blacker story of persecu- 
 tion than that which marks the annals of New 
 England under the Puritan Fathers and their 
 descendants. Its incidents, says one of Whittier's 
 editors, " grate on the poet's memory, and fire 
 his indignation, and he refuses to be cajoled into 
 regarding as saintly religionists the rigid op- 
 pressors who wielded the scourge and the brand- 
 ing iron for Quakers, and at whose bidding 
 Friends male and female, dangled from gibbets." 
 In Whittier's verse the hatchet is never 
 
KEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. 5 
 
 quite buried. In the " King's Missive " the 
 poet calls up the historic scene in which 
 " the worshipful Governor Endicott, a grave, 
 strong man, who knew no peer," was sud- 
 denly stayed in his cruel courses by the 
 return from England of an exiled Friend, bear- 
 ing the imperative order of Charles II. to stop 
 "this vein of innocent blood," Little suspect- 
 ing the man came thus weaponed, Endicott 
 cried in his anger — 
 
 "At every turn 
 The pestilent Quakers are in my path ! 
 Some we have scourged, and banished some. 
 Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, 
 Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, 
 Sowing their lieresy's seed of sin." 
 
 Twice and thrice on the chamber floor, 
 
 Striding fiercely from wall to wall, 
 " The Lord do so to me and more,"' 
 
 The governor cried, " if I hang not all 
 Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate, 
 With the look of a man at ease with fate, 
 Into that presence, grim and dread, 
 Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head. 
 
6 J(iHN G. WHITTIEK. 
 
 " Off with the knave's hat!" An angry hand 
 
 Smote down the offence ; but the wearer said, 
 With a quiet smile, " By the king's command 
 I bear this message and stand in his stead." 
 In the Governor's hand a missive he laid 
 With the royal arms on its seal displayed. 
 And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, 
 Uncovering, " Grive Mr. Shattuck his hat." 
 
 He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,— 
 
 " The king commandeth your friends' release. 
 
 Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although 
 To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. 
 
 What he here enjoineth, John Endicott, 
 
 His loyal servant, questioneth not. 
 
 You are free ! God grant the spirit you own 
 
 May take you from us to parts unknown." 
 
 Although this stopped hangings on Boston 
 Common (already there had been three), it did not 
 abrogate the laws which wreaked themselves on 
 Friends in fines, whippings, banishment and 
 prison-bars. Only a year after these events it 
 was enacted that any master of a vessel who " im- 
 ported " a Quaker should be liable to a fine of 5,000 
 pounds of tobacco. Whoever went to a Quaker's 
 meeting was to pay 10/-, and £5 if he preached. 
 Quakers not inhabitants were to be banished, and 
 
NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. 
 
 flogged if they returned; and if they were inhab- 
 itants they must be banished or recant. Travel- 
 ling Quakers were to be whipped through the 
 towns. And when, at last, the penal statutes 
 against heresy were allowed to rest, the old 
 hatred smouldered on for generations ; " time," 
 says an American biographer of Whittier, 
 " softened the hearts of bigots, and wore off the 
 sharp edges of dogmas ; but this was not until 
 Church and State had been divorced, and not 
 until the Quaker's memory of the days of 
 bitterness had become as unchanging as his 
 sad-coloured garments." 
 
 It imported nothing to Whittier that his im- 
 mediate ancestors had perhaps escaped the lash 
 and halter. Through them he had none the less 
 touch with the Boston persecutions, and he in- 
 herited that in his blood which broke out 
 again and again in fierce hatred of tyranny and 
 intolerance, past and present. The children of 
 Thomas Whittier, the immigrant, were probably 
 Friends, and we have seen that the youngest, 
 Joseph, married into the Peasley family. Joseph 
 
8 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Peasley was much associated with Thomas Macey 
 (both being preaching Friends), and one of the 
 family traditions tells how, in 1659, the latter 
 sturdy Quaker fell under the law. 
 
 Four Friends from Salem were visiting 
 the small towns along the shores of the Merri- 
 mac, and it is probable that Thomas Whittier 
 and his family heard them gladly when in due 
 course they came to Haverhill. Thence they 
 travelled to Salisbury, where Thomas Macey 
 entertained them at his cottage after the simple 
 apostolic manner of Friends. He was at once 
 prosecuted, and ordered to pay thirty shillings, 
 but, acting no doubt with wisdom, he fled to 
 Nantucket, where he established himself. The 
 story in detail is the subject of Whittier's stir- 
 ring ballad, " The Exiles," in which we learn 
 how, when Macey 's pious guests were scarce 
 seated, 
 
 A heavy tramp of horses' feet 
 
 Came sounding up the hine, 
 And half a score of horse, or more, 
 
 Came plunging through the rain. 
 
NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. » 
 
 Now, Goodman Macey, ope thy door — 
 We would not be housebreakers ; 
 
 A ruefid deed thou'st done this day 
 In harbouring banished Quakers. 
 
 The escape of the Maceys, man and wife, by 
 leaping into a moored boat, and the dialogue 
 between them and their angry pursuers left on 
 the bank, are told vigorously and with humour— 
 
 The priest came panting to the shore — 
 
 His grave cocked hat was gone ; 
 Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung 
 
 His wig upon a thorn. 
 
 " Come back — come back ! " the parson cried 
 
 "The Church's curse beware." 
 " Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macey, " but 
 
 Thy blessing prithee spare." 
 
 " Vile scoffer ! " cried the baffied priest, 
 
 " Thou'lt yet the gallows see." 
 " Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned," 
 
 Quoth Macey, merrily. 
 
 After some verses descriptive of the voyage 
 we learn — 
 
 Far round the bleak and stormy Cape 
 
 The vent'rous Macey passed. 
 And on Nantucket's naked isle 
 
 Drew up his boat at last. 
 
lO JOHN G. WHITTIRR. 
 
 And liow, in log-built cabin, 
 
 They braved the rough sea-weather ; 
 
 And there, in peace and quietness, 
 Went down life's vale together : 
 
 How others drew around them, 
 
 And how their fishing sped. 
 Until to every wind o£ heaven 
 
 Nantucket's sails were spread ; 
 
 How pale Want alternated 
 
 With Plenty's golden smile ; 
 Behold, is it not written 
 
 In the annals of the isle ? 
 
 Whittier's young mind was fed with such 
 stories, and in the family circle, when the fire- 
 glow shimmered on the faces he loved, the boy's 
 thoughts were prophetic, though he knew it 
 not, of strife, and songs of strife, to come. In 
 « Snow-Bound " the poet tells us, 
 
 Our mother, while she turned her wheel, 
 Or run the new knit stocldng heel, 
 
 Told how the midnight hordes came down 
 At midnight on Cocheco town. 
 
 Then, haply, with a look more grave, 
 And soberer tone, some tale she gave 
 From painful Sewel's ancient tome. 
 Beloved in every Quaker home, 
 Of faith fire-winged with martyrdom. 
 
NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. ll 
 
 Does not the last line seem born of the 
 moment when the boy's eye, flashing in the 
 innocence of indignation, was answered by his 
 mother's smile as she thought of the years and 
 what they might bring. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 "Dear heart '.—the legend is not vain 
 Which lights that holy hearth again, 
 And calling back from care and pain, 
 
 And death's funereal sadness. 
 Draws round its old familiar blaze 
 The clustering groups of happier days, 
 And lends to sober manhood's gaze 
 
 A glimpse of childish gladness." 
 
 " To My Sister. 
 
 "It was the policy of the good old gentleman to 
 make his children feel that home was the happiest place 
 in the world; and I value this delicious home feeling as 
 one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow." 
 
 Washington Irving. 
 
 I 
 
 T is the truism of truisms to say that the 
 influence of the home is chief in the 
 making of character. Within that sphere it is 
 not word and deed only that, for good or 
 evil, impress themselves on a child's waxen 
 mind, but looks also, and veiled looks, habitual 
 moods and assumed, silence and darkness as 
 
NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY. 13 
 
 well as motherly talk and cheery lamps, books 
 of course, and the meanest picture on the 
 nursery wall, the morning and the evening 
 hour, the family's unity or lack of it, and 
 things impalpable and invisible, not of the 
 wills, but flowing unawares from the settled 
 dispositions of the parents. This is matter of 
 knowledge, yet the Iwme inaking of men is 
 only beginning to be recognised as something 
 more than a duty enjoined by Solomon, even an 
 art to be reduced to its first principles like 
 any other. Perhaps the time is near when a 
 new scientific Biography will set itself to 
 discover and illustrate those principles in a 
 way that has not yet been attempted. Mean- 
 while they may be approached in the written 
 lives of men whose days and years are 
 visibly linked in one chain continuing back 
 unbroken into the mysteries of their first years. 
 This continuity is a marked characteristic of 
 Whittier's life, and constitutes, perhaps, its 
 peculiar charm for ourselves. In the man's 
 tones there is ever the timbre of his boy- 
 
14 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 hood's shouts ; he harks back often to the 
 " green mirage of a simple life," now dwell- 
 ing fondly on — 
 
 Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, 
 All that lies buried under fifty years. 
 
 now nursing a fond regret of vanished days — 
 
 for boyhood's time of June, 
 Crowding years in one brief moon. 
 
 now drawing from the past inspiration instead 
 of sighs — 
 
 The great eventful Present hides the Past ; but through 
 
 the din 
 Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind 
 
 steal in ; 
 And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary 
 
 rhyme, 
 Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes 
 
 his time. 
 
 or again solemnly weighing the treasures of 
 memory and hope against each other — 
 
 Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
 And folded wings of ashen gray 
 And voice of echoes far away, 
 
 The brazen covers of thy book ; 
 
 The weird palimpsest old and vast 
 
NEW EXGLAXD ANCESTRY. 15 
 
 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
 Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
 The characters of joy and woe ; 
 The monographs of outlived years, 
 Or smUe-illumed or dim with tears, 
 
 Green hills of life that slope to death. 
 And haimts of home, whose vista'd trees 
 Shade off to mournfid cypresses 
 
 With the white amaranths underneath. 
 Even while I look, I can but heed 
 
 The restless sands' incessant fall. 
 Importunate hours that hom-s succeed. 
 Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 
 
 And duty keeping pace with all. 
 Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 
 I hear again the voice that bids 
 The dreamer leave his di-eam mid-way 
 For larger hopes and graver fears : 
 Life greatens in these later years, 
 The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 
 Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 
 Some Truce of God wliich breaks its strife 
 The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 
 
 Dreaming in throngful city ways 
 Of winter joj's his boyhood knew ; 
 And dear and early fi-iends — the few 
 Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
 
 These Flemish pictiures of old days ; 
 Sit with me by the homestead hearth. 
 And stretch the hands of memory forth 
 
 To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 
 
16 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
 Shall greet me like the odours blown 
 From unseen meadows newly mown, 
 Or lilies floating in some pond, 
 Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
 The traveller owns the grateful sense 
 Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
 And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
 The benediction of the air. 
 
 The man who could play Whittier's part, 
 in "Whittier's times, and still turn naturally 
 to scenes and feelings like these to find him- 
 self must be pourtrayed mainly apart from 
 his public employments. A quarter of a century 
 ago, indeed, we should have discussed Whittier 
 as Patriot, Abolitionist, or Teacher, but now 
 we desire rather to realize the Maoi, in whom 
 these characters became conspicuous only as 
 passing events and temporary conditions drew 
 them into prominence. Now, we ask, not so 
 much for his newspaper record, as for his 
 history in the family, in friendship, in the 
 social circle, and, so far as we may rightly 
 ask for it, in the chamber of his own heart. 
 
 The Whittier home stood and still stands 
 
THE OLD HOME. 17 
 
 in a peaceful valley of not unusual beauty. 
 F. H. Underwood, whose excellent biography 
 of Whittier had the poet's approval, has thus 
 written of it : — 
 
 " The Whittier house is more open to view 
 from the main road than it was sixty years 
 ago. The woods that hemmed it in have been 
 mostly cleared, enlarging greatly the fields of 
 pasture and meadow. The house faces south- 
 ward, and in front is a grass plot, sloping to- 
 wards a small but faithful brook. Here on 
 this sunny slope it was that 'once a garden 
 smiled,' and at its western corner rose the tall 
 well-sweep, since displaced by the prosaic pump. 
 The little brook comes from a marshy tract on 
 a higher level, and gurgles pleasantly through 
 a narrow rock ravine in which are the rude 
 remains of a dam." 
 
 Of this brook, whose music seems to have 
 haunted him in after years as that of the 
 Bandusian fountain haunted the ear of Horace, 
 Whittier wrote in the "Barefoot Boy": — 
 
 2 
 
18 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Laughed the brook for my delight, 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Whispering at the garden wall, 
 Talked with me from fall to fall. 
 
 And what the other stream has been to 
 countless lovers of Horace— a place of refresh- 
 ing pilgrimage — "Little Brook" has been to 
 many a reader of the volume that contains 
 "Maud Mtiller" and "The Countess." A 
 magazine writer thus enthusiastically describes 
 his visit, — " We lay on the grass and listened 
 to its pleasant voice, and tried to imagine the 
 poet, a rosy-cheeked, curly headed, "Barefoot 
 Boy," dabbling in its clear waters. And we 
 wished that the blessed gift of health might 
 be granted him as in that happy time, "boy- 
 hood's time of June." The place was so 
 lovely, the associations were so interesting, 
 that we were loth to leave — the grass was so 
 green, the brook so sweet-voiced. The air 
 was full of warm delightful summer sounds; — 
 the drowsy hum of bees, the shrill cry of the 
 locust, the distant lowing of cows. We looked 
 
THE OLD HOME, 19 
 
 and listened, and dreamed dreams, and sang 
 snatches of old song." 
 
 " The foliage," continues Mr. Underwood, 
 *' is rich and varied in the immediate vicinity, 
 and the country is seen to consist of softly 
 rounded elevations — broad and flattened domes 
 — lovely in colour and relieved by charming 
 groups of trees. Westward lies lake Kenoza, 
 half obscured, half revealed, among clumps and 
 thickets." 
 
 Kenoza ! o'er no sweeter lake 
 
 Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail, — 
 No fairer face than thine shall take 
 
 The sunset's golden veil. 
 
 Long be it ere the tide of trade 
 Sliall break the harsh-resounding din 
 
 The quiet of thy banks of shade, 
 And hills that fold thee in. 
 
 Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 
 The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, 
 
 Wmg-weary from his fields of air, 
 The wild-goose on thee float. 
 
 Thy peace rebuke om- feverish stir, 
 Thy beauty our deforming strife ; 
 
 Thy woods and waters minister 
 The healing of their life. 
 
20 JOHX G. WHITTIER. 
 
 And sinless Mirth, from care released, 
 Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky. 
 
 Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast 
 The Master's loving eye. 
 
 And when the summer day grows dim, 
 And light mists walk thy mimic sea, 
 
 Kevive in us the thought of Him 
 Who walked on Galilee ! 
 
 Other features in the Haverhill landscape 
 are graphically depicted by Mr. Underwood — 
 the dimly seen pyramidal mass of Agamenticus, 
 the gorgeous tints of the foliage in autumn, 
 the tract of black bog south-east of the home- 
 stead ; but it is certain that, however skilful 
 a writer may be, he cannot hope by the most 
 exact description to impress different minds 
 with the same idea of a complex landscape. 
 
 We will turn therefore to more exact deline- 
 ations of the Whittier home itself. This is a low 
 brown wooden house standing close to the road. 
 It was built by Thomas Whittier some forty years 
 after he came to Haverhill, when he would seem 
 to have desired to replace the old log house 
 of his youth by a family roof tree that should 
 
THE OLD HOME. 21 
 
 shelter his children's children. " Externally," 
 says Mr. Underwood, " it has been somewhat 
 changed of late years, but within, it remains 
 substantially as it was in the period in which 
 " Snow Bound " w^as located. New clapboards 
 and window caps, as well as new outer doors 
 and sashes, all in fresh paint, have given the 
 old home a spruce modern look. But some of the 
 ancient carpentry remains, and there are still 
 in use quaint iron door handles, latches, and 
 hinges, which Puritan smiths hammered out 
 two centuries ago. Some of the original doors, 
 too dilapidated for service, are stored in an 
 outbuilding. The glass in the windows is 
 modern, except a few panes in the kitchen 
 and chambers. The sturdy chimney has been 
 newly topped, but its antiquity is evident 
 w^hen its huge mass is seen in the open space 
 of the large back chamber. One sees that the 
 chimney was the central idea of a new settler's 
 home. The kitchen fire-place, once broad 
 enough to admit benches on either side, has 
 now been narrow^ed by rows of bricks, thereby 
 
22 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 closing a curious cave of an oven buried in 
 the recess. The square front rooms are un- 
 changed. The marks of their century are on 
 every part of the work : strength and simplic- 
 ity. The oaken beams, which a man of fair 
 height can touch with an upraised hand, are 
 fifteen inches square and as firm as when laid. 
 The wainscots and floors are well preserved. 
 At one end of the kitchen was a bedroom 
 known as the mother's room, but it was in 
 the west front room that our poet saw the 
 light. The small chamber overhead is the one 
 he occupied when a boy. A flight of well 
 worn steps leads up to it from the kitchen. 
 Above are the time-stained rafters and the 
 boards pierced with nail points which used to 
 glisten like powdered stars on frosty mornings. 
 Here it was, as the poet has told us, where, 
 on stormy nights, — 
 
 We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
 The boards-nails snapping in the frost ; 
 And on us through the unplastered wall, 
 Felt the light-rifted snow-flakes fall. 
 
THE OLD HOME. 
 
 23 
 
 " If our readers," continues Mr. Underwood, 
 "can recall the parts of this description, and 
 look upon this old farmhouse from a proper 
 point without, it will be seen that if there were 
 once more a garden in front, a tall well-sweep at 
 the left, the barn and sheds in the rear, and 
 if the oaks on every side were renewed— 
 sturdier, thicker, nearer,— the place would be 
 once more what it was when Whittier was a 
 boy. ... No ; the Whittier homestead is 
 not beautiful as artists consider beauty; but 
 sweet and tender memories render our eyes 
 misty as we look upon it ; and with such asso- 
 ciations there comes a feeling which the artist 
 of mere beauty can never create. The scene 
 is quiet, unmodernized, near to aboriginal 
 nature, and suggestive of a calm simplicity 
 that asks for no admiration,— as if a segment 
 of another century had survived the changes 
 
 of time." 
 
 Such was the boy's home ; let us try to people 
 it with the old familiar faces. Whittier has 
 already done this for us in his exquisite "Snow- 
 
24 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Bound " than which no more finished picture 
 of rural home life has enriched poetry since 
 Horace sang to Roman patricians of his 
 father's humble Venusian farm on the bright- 
 flowing Aufidus. Herrick truly has sung with 
 a more exquisite grace of country sights and 
 sounds — " hock-carts, wassails, wakes " — and 
 even of the social hour, 
 
 When the hearth 
 Smiles to itself and gilds the roof with mirth. 
 
 Burns, using a metre alien to his genius, has 
 charmed mankind with his " Cotter's Saturday 
 Night ; " yet " Snow-Bound " remains without 
 a rival in the language as a mirror of home-bred 
 delights. See the evening circle gather, heedless 
 of the " shrieking of the mindless wind," — 
 
 As night drew on, and, from the crest 
 Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
 The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
 From sight beneath the smothering bank. 
 We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
 Of wood against the chimney back — 
 The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
 And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
 The knotty forestick laid apart, 
 
THE OLD HOME. 
 
 25 
 
 And filled between with ciiriuus art 
 
 The ragged brush ; then hovering near, 
 
 We w^atched the first red blaze appear, 
 
 Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
 
 On white-washed wall and sagging beam, 
 
 Until the old, rude-fiirnished room 
 
 Burst flower-like into rosy bloom ; 
 
 While radiant with a mimic flame 
 
 Outside the sparkling drift became, 
 
 And through the bare-boughed lilac tree 
 
 Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
 
 The crane and pendent trammels showed. 
 
 The Turks' heads on the andiron glowed ; 
 
 While childish fancy prompt to tell 
 
 The meaning of the miracle. 
 
 Whispered the old rhyme : ' Under the tree,' 
 
 When fire outdoors bums merrily, 
 
 There the witches are making tea.' 
 
 Shut in from all the world without, 
 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth about. 
 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 
 In baffled rage at pane and door, 
 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 
 The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed. 
 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 
 The great throat of the chimney laughed, 
 
 The house-dog on his paws outspread 
 
 Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
 
 The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
 
26 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 A coucliant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
 And, fur the wiuter fireside meet, 
 Between the andirons' straddling feet. 
 The mug of cider simmered slow. 
 The apples sputtered in a row. 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October's wood. 
 
 Then began riddle-making and story tell- 
 ing. The father, " a prompt, decisive man," 
 as the poet calls him, who had gone through 
 many adventures among Indians and trappers 
 in his youth, would drift into recollections of 
 these wilder days. — 
 
 Our father rode again his ride 
 On Memphreraagog's wooded side ; 
 Sat down again to moose and samp 
 In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
 Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
 Beneath St. Fran9ois' hemlock trees ; 
 Again for him the moonlight shone 
 On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 
 Again he heard the violin play 
 Which led the village dance away, 
 And mingled in its merry whirl 
 The grandam and the laughing girl. 
 
 The mother next told — 
 
 In her fitting phrase 
 So rich and picturesque and free 
 
THE OLD HOME. 27 
 
 (The common unrhymed poetry 
 
 Of simple life and country ways) 
 
 The story of her early days,— 
 
 She made us welcome to her home ; 
 
 Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 
 
 We stole with her a frightened look 
 
 At the grey wizard's conjm-ing book, 
 
 The fame whereof went far and wide 
 
 Through all the simple country-side ; 
 
 We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
 
 The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
 
 The loon's weird laughter far away ; 
 
 We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
 
 What flowers in wood and meadow grew. 
 
 What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
 
 She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
 
 Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
 
 The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
 
 And heard the wild-geese calling loud 
 
 Beneath the grey November cloud. 
 
 Then, haply, with a look more grave. 
 
 And soberer tone, some tale she gave 
 
 From painful Sewell's ancient tome, 
 
 Beloved in every Quaker home. 
 
 Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom. 
 
 Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,— 
 
 Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint !— 
 
 Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 
 
 And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 
 
 And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 
 
 His portly presence mad for food. 
 
28 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 With dark hints muttered under breath 
 Of casting lots for life or death, 
 Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 
 To be himself the sacrifice. 
 Then suddenly, as if to save 
 The good man from liis living grave, 
 A ripple on the water grew, 
 A school of porpoise flashed in view. 
 ' Take eat,' he said, ' and be content ; 
 These fishes in my stead are sent 
 By Him who gave the tangled ram 
 To spare the child of Abraham.' 
 
 A beautiful portrait is the following :— 
 
 Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 
 And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
 The sweetest woman ever Fate 
 Perverse denied a household mate. 
 
 For well she kept her genial mood 
 And simple faith of maidenhood ; 
 Before her still a cloudland lay, 
 The mirage loomed across her way ; 
 
 Through years of toil, and soil, and care. 
 From glossy tress to thin grey hair. 
 All unprofaned she held apart. 
 The virgin fancies of the heart. 
 
 The uncle who — 
 
THE OLD HOME. 29 
 
 Innocent of books, 
 Was rich in lore o£ fields and brooks. 
 
 A simple, guileless, childlike man. 
 Content to live where life began 
 
 was Uncle Moses, " a man for the little 
 
 folks to love." He was killed in 1824 by 
 
 the fall of a tree. 
 
 The elder sister of the poet, Mary, has 
 
 her place, too, in this matchless gallery— 
 
 A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
 Faithful, and almost sternly just. 
 Keeping with many a light disguise 
 The secret of self-sacrifice. 
 
 and then the younger sister — 
 
 Upon the motley braided mat 
 Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
 Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 
 
 The following sketch of a village school- 
 master is masterly enough to bear comparison 
 with Goldsmith's in " The Deserted Village " :— 
 
 Brisk wielder of the birch and rule. 
 The master of the district school 
 Held at the fu-e his favoured place, 
 Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
 Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
 
30 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
 He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
 Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
 Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
 In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
 Born the wild Northern hills among, 
 From whence his yeoman father wrung 
 By patient toil subsistence scant, 
 Not competence and yet not want. 
 He early gained the power to pay 
 His cheerful, self-reliant way ; 
 Could do£E at ease his scholar's gown 
 To peddle wares from town to town ; 
 Or through the long vacations reach 
 In lonely lowland districts teach, 
 Where all the droll experience found 
 At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
 The moonlit skater's keen delight. 
 The sleigh-drive through the frosty night. 
 The rustic party, with its rough 
 Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
 And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
 His winter task a pastime made. 
 Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
 He tuned his merry violin, 
 Or played the athlete in the barn, 
 Or held the good dame's winding-yarn 
 Or mirth-provoking versions told 
 Of classic legends rare and old. 
 Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
 Had all the commonplace of home, 
 
THE OLD HOME. 31 
 
 And little seemed at best the odds 
 'Tu'ixt Yankee pedlars and old gods ; 
 Where Pindus-born Araxes took 
 The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
 And dread Olympus at his will 
 Became a huckleberry hill. 
 
 The Whittier home was the very place 
 in which poetical instincts might quicken, nor 
 were there wanting those influences which 
 under Divine blessing would form a high and 
 pure character. 
 
 " In the Whittier family," we are told, 
 " the reading of the Holy Scriptures was a 
 constant practice. On First-Day afternoon, 
 especially, the mother would read them with 
 the children, endeavouring to impress their 
 minds with familiar conversation ; and to this 
 early and habitual instruction we may attri- 
 bute in great measure the full and accurate 
 knowledge of Bible History which the poems 
 of J. G. Whittier indicate, as well as the strong 
 bias, in favour of moral reform which was so 
 early manifested. It is a tradition in the 
 family that when J. G. Whittier was very 
 
32 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 young he often sought from his father and 
 others a solution of his doubts respecting the 
 morality of certain acts of the patriarchs and 
 other holy men of old ; and at one time he 
 declared that King David could not have been 
 a member of the Society of Friends, because 
 he was a man of war." 
 
 The visits of travelling Friends to Haviland, 
 too, must often have raised the thoughts of 
 the children to higher things than the life of 
 home and village. On one occasion, we are 
 told, no fewer than sixteen Friends were 
 housed for the night under John Whittier's 
 hospitable roof. Ministers from England were 
 not seldom guests, and among them came 
 William Forster, the father of the late Right 
 Hon. William Edward Forster. This visit is 
 alluded to in Whittier's poem beginning— 
 
 The years are many since his hand 
 Was laid upon my head, 
 
 Too weak and young to understand 
 The serious words he said. 
 
 Yet the poem is a witness of the lasting 
 
 blessing of this one incident. 
 
THE OLD HOME. 33 
 
 In this quiet home, ^vhere ancestral evangels 
 spoke from every wall and oaken beam, where 
 parents and brothers and sisters lived in earthly 
 love, and together sought the heavenly, where 
 Christian pilgrims stayed to break bread, and 
 Nature uttered her thousand litanies around — 
 young Whittier was growing to the proportions 
 of the Happy Warrior, he 
 
 Who, when brought 
 Into the tasks of real life, hath -wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE YOUNG IDEA. 
 
 " Still as my horizon grew, 
 Larger grew my riches too ; 
 All the world I saw or knew 
 Seemed a complex Chinese toy 
 Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! " 
 
 " The Barefoot Boy." 
 
 " A wit in youth not over dull, heavy, knotty, and 
 lumpish, but hard, tough, and though somewhat staffish, 
 both for learning and the whole course of living proveth 
 always best." 
 
 EOGER ASCHAM. 
 
 TOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER'S first 
 schoolmaster was Joshua Coffin, destined 
 to be also his life-long friend. Coffin is not 
 the genial pedagogue who figures in Snow- 
 Bound, but he has his place in Whittier's 
 verse. In the school-house, an old brown 
 building, long since removed, we might linger, 
 if we pleased, over Whittier's slate and spell- 
 ing book, but we shall find something better 
 
THE YOUNG IDEA. 35 
 
 worth resuscitating in a certain boyish infatu- 
 ation, the story of which is enshrined in some 
 charming verses entitled " In School-Days." 
 
 Still sits the school-house by the road, 
 
 A ragged beggar sunning ; 
 Around it still the sumachs grow. 
 
 And blackberry-vines are running. 
 
 Within, the master's desk is seen, 
 Deep scarred by raps official ; 
 
 The warping-floor, the battered seats, 
 The jack-knife's carved initial ; 
 
 The charcoal frescoes on its wall ; 
 
 Its door's worn sill, betraying 
 The feet that, creeping low to school. 
 
 Went storming out to playing ! 
 
 Long years ago a winter sun 
 
 Shone over it at setting ; 
 Lit up its western window-panes, 
 
 And low eaves' icy fretting 
 
 It touched the tangled golden cui'ls. 
 And brown eyes full of gi'ieving. 
 
 Of one who still her steps delayed 
 When all the school were leaA^ng. 
 
 For near her stood the little boy 
 
 Her childish favoiu- singled : 
 His cap pulled low upon a face 
 
 Where pride and shame were mingled. 
 
36 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Pushing with restless feet the snow- 
 To right and left, he lingered ; — 
 
 As restlessly her tiny hands 
 
 The blue-checked apron fingered. 
 
 He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 
 The soft hand's light caressing, 
 
 And heard the tremble of her voice, 
 As if a fault confessing. 
 
 " I'm sorry that I spelt the word : 
 
 I hate to go above you, 
 Because," — the brown eyes lower fell — 
 
 " Because, you see, I love you ! " 
 
 Still memory to a grey-haired man 
 That sweet child-face is showing. 
 
 Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
 Have forty years been growing ! 
 
 He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
 How few who pass above him 
 
 Lament their triumph and his loss. 
 Like her, — because they love him. 
 
 Whittier was seven when he came under 
 
 Joshua Coffin's mild rule. Of the next six or 
 
 seven years what shall be said .'' 
 
 A boy's will is the wind's will. 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. 
 
 Whittier's years passed as other country 
 
 boys' do, and it will be needful to dwell only 
 
 on a few points and incidents involved in a 
 
THE YOUNG IDEA. 
 
 37 
 
 true understanding of his mental development. 
 A free country life was his — 
 
 I was rich in flowers and trees, 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
 For my sport the squirrel played, 
 Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
 For my taste the blackberry cone 
 Purpled over hedge and stone ; 
 Laughed the brook for my delight. 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 "Whispering at the garden wall, 
 Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
 Mine the sand rimmed pickerel pond, 
 Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
 Mine, on bending orchard trees. 
 Apples of Hesperides. 
 
 for festal dainties spread. 
 Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 
 Pewter spoon and bowl of wood. 
 On the door-stone, grey and rude ! 
 O'er me, like a regal tent. 
 Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent. 
 Purple curtained, fringed with gold, 
 Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
 While for music came the play 
 Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
 And, to light the noisy choir. 
 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
 I was monarch : pomp and joy 
 Waited on the barefoot boy ! 
 
38 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 But the boy's fancy took other and more 
 fearsome flights. Those of us who have lived, 
 especially in boyhood, in some remote part 
 whence superstition has not been banished by 
 the steam-plough and the flippant bicycle, know 
 how the uncanny element seems to be every- 
 where, to threaten from every copse, and waver 
 above the forsaken beds of rushes. Such a 
 district was the valley of the Merrimac when 
 Whittier was a boy, and many a tale of these 
 signs and wonders is to be found in his prose 
 writings. One of his earliest recollections was 
 of an old woman, living about two miles from 
 the homestead, who was believed to be a witch, 
 and at last, to get rid of her tormentors, went 
 before a Justice of the Peace to make oath 
 that she was a Christian woman, and no witch. 
 Of course there were a number of well-estab- 
 lished ghosts, including a headless one, who 
 was seen at times walking under the river- 
 side willows carrying his head in a tin pail. 
 There was a mill that worked by no earthly 
 agency, and a midnight cry from the ground. 
 
THE YOUXG IDEA. 39 
 
 and stories of human beings fascinated by 
 rattle-snakes. In such poems as the " Witch 
 of Wenham," the "Witch's Daughter," "The 
 Rattlesnake Hunter," " The Old Burial Ground," 
 and many others, we catch glimpses of these 
 village terrors. Whittier loved to stir them 
 up and play with them. 
 
 From the graves of old traditions I part the hlack- 
 
 berry vines, 
 Wipe the moss from oft' the head-stones, and retouch 
 
 the faded lines. 
 
 Another set of impressions came from the 
 visits of gypsies, pedlars, and such wandering 
 folk. Whittier's description of them is a 
 capital piece of poet's prose. " The advent 
 of wandering beggars or 'old stragglers' was 
 an event of no ordinary interest in the 
 monotonous quietude of our farm-life. They 
 had their periodical revolutions and transits ; 
 we could calculate them like eclipses or new 
 moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and 
 saucy, and whenever they ascertained that the 
 ' men folks ' were absent, would order pro- 
 
40 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 visions and cider like men who expected to 
 pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth 
 or table with the air of Falstafle— ' Shall I not 
 take mine ease in mine inn ? ' Others, poor, 
 pale, patient, like Sterne's monk, came creep- 
 ing up to the door, hat in hand, standing there 
 in their grey wretchedness with a look of heart- 
 break and forlornness which was never without 
 its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. At times, 
 however, we experienced a slight revulsion of 
 feeling when even these humblest children 
 of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our 
 proffered bread and cheese, and demanded 
 instead a glass of cider. Whatever the tem- 
 perance society might in such cases have done, 
 it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor 
 creatures a draught of their favourite beverage ; 
 and wasn't it a satisfaction to see their sad, 
 melancholy faces light up as we handed them 
 the fiill pitcher, and, on receiving it back 
 empty from their brown wrinkled hands, to 
 hear them, half breathless from their long, de- 
 licious draught, thanking us for the favour as_ 
 
THE YOUNr} IDE\. 
 
 41 
 
 ' dear, good children ! ' Not xmf requently these 
 wandering tests of our benevolence made their 
 appearance in interesting groups of man, woman, 
 and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and 
 manifesting a maudlin affection which would 
 have done honour to the revellers at Poosie- 
 Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. 
 I remember some who were the victims of 
 monomania— haunted and hunted by some dark 
 thought— possessed by a fixed idea. One, a 
 black eyed, wild-haired woman, with a whole 
 tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written in 
 her countenance, used often to visit us, warm her- 
 self by our winter fire, and supply herself with a 
 stock of cakes and cold meat ; but was never 
 known to answer a question or to ask one. She 
 never smiled ; the cold, stony look of her eye 
 never changed ; a silent, impassive face, frozen 
 rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used 
 to look with awe upon the " still woman," 
 and think of the demoniac of Scripture who 
 had a " dumb spirit." One— I think I see 
 him now, grim, quaint, and ghastly, working 
 
4^ JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 his slow way up to our door — used to gather 
 herbs by the wayside and call himself doctor. 
 He was bearded like a he goat and used to 
 counterfeit lameness, yet when he supposed 
 himself alone, would travel on lustilj' as if 
 walking for a wager. At length, as if in 
 punishment of his deceit, he met with an 
 accident in his rambles and became lame in 
 earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on 
 his gnarled crutches. Another used to go 
 stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack 
 made of an old bed-sacking, stuffed out into 
 most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair 
 of small, meagre legs, and peering out with 
 his wild hairy face from under his burden 
 like a big-bodied spider. That ' man with 
 the pack.' always inspired me with awe and 
 reverence. Huge, almost sublime in its tense 
 rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid 
 aside and never opened, what might there not 
 be within it ? With what flesh-creeping curios- 
 ity I used to walk round about it at a safe 
 distance, half expecting to see its striped cover- 
 
THE YOUNG IDEA. 
 
 43 
 
 ing stirred by the motions of a mysterious 
 life, or that some evil monster would leap 
 out of it, like robbers from Ali Baba's jars, 
 or armed men from the Troian horse ! " 
 
 What figures these ! equal to any of Rem- 
 brandt's beggar kings ! One more portrait must 
 be added ; " Twice a year, usually in the spring 
 or autumn, we were honoured with a call from 
 Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, peddler 
 and poet, physician and parson, — a Yankee 
 troubadour, — first and last minstrel of the valley 
 of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering 
 young eyes, with the very nimbus of immor- 
 tality. He brought with him pins, needles, 
 tape, and cotton thread for my mother ; jack- 
 knives, razors, and soap for my father ; and 
 verses of his own composing, coarsely printed 
 and illustrated with rude woodcuts, for the 
 delectation of the youger branches of the family. 
 No love-sick youth could drown himself, no 
 deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue 
 mount the gallows, without fitting Memorial 
 in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers. 
 
44 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favonrs 
 from Providence furnishing the raw material 
 of song or ballad. Welcome to us in our 
 country seclusion as Autolycus to the clown 
 in the ' Winter's Tale,' we listened with infinite 
 satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, 
 or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic 
 incident or topic suggested by his auditors. 
 When once fairly over the difficulties at the 
 outset of a new subject, his rhymes flowed 
 freely, ' as if he had eaten ballads, and all 
 
 men's ears grew to his tunes.' His productions 
 answered, as nearly as I can remember, to 
 Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad — 
 ' doleful matter merrily set down, or a pleasant 
 theme sung lamentably.' He was scrupulously 
 conscientious, devout, inclined to theological 
 disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. 
 He was thoroughly independent ; flattered no- 
 body, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When 
 invited to sit down at our dinner table he 
 invariably took the precaution to place his 
 basket of valuables between his legs for safe 
 
THE YOUNG IDEA. 45 
 
 keeping. 'Never mind thy basket, Jonathan,' 
 said my father, 'We shan't steal thy verses,' 
 ' I'm not so sure of that,' returned the suspicions 
 guest. ' It is written, " Trust ye not in any 
 
 brother." " 
 
 Plummer's literary talk could not have 
 been unwelcome in a house where the almanac, 
 the village weekly paper, and '' scarce a score of 
 books and pamphlets " were to be found, among 
 them, let us pause to note, — 
 
 One harmless novel, mostly hid 
 From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
 And poetry (or good or bad, 
 A single book was all we had), 
 Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted IMuse, 
 A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
 Sang with a somewhat nasal whine, 
 The wars of David and the Jews. 
 
 But one day Joshua Cof&n came in bringing 
 a copy of Burns, and about the same time a 
 " pawky auld carle " of a wandering Scotch- 
 man turned up, and after eating his bread 
 and cheese and drinking his mug of cider, he 
 sang " Bonnie Doon," " Highland Mary," and 
 
46 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 "Auld Lang Syne," with spirit, and in a full 
 rich voice. The boy's heart was in a tumult ; 
 and trivial as was the occasion, it was great 
 in result. He threw himself into Burns's 
 poetry with boyish rapture, first taking 
 pains to master the glossary. '■'■ It was about 
 the first poetry I had ever read (with the 
 exception of that of the Bible of which I had 
 been a close student), and it had a lasting 
 influence upon me. I began to make rhymes 
 myself, and to imagine stories and adventures." 
 " I found," he adds, " that the things out of 
 which poems came were not, as I had always 
 imagined, somewhere away off in a world and 
 life lying outside the edge of our own New 
 Hampshire sky, — they were right here about 
 my feet and among the people I knew. The 
 common things of life, I found, were full of 
 poetry." 
 
 The boy's mind was now set toward 
 the Muse. Looking on Nature with enlarged 
 eyes he felt that it was in him to re-create 
 her loveliness in words rhythmic as the Merrimac, 
 
THE TOUNG IDEA. 47 
 
 soft and wooing as Kenoza's dream, or awful 
 as the voices of the pines on Ramoth Hill ; 
 and with these there perhaps mingled harsher 
 notes, vague suggestions as of — 
 
 Ancestral -voices, prophesying war. 
 
 More than one poem has been indicated 
 by different writers as Whittier's first effort. 
 From an American biography, just published, by 
 "W. S. Kennedy, a gentleman who seems to be 
 deeply versed in Whittier lore, it would appear 
 that we have no earlier lines of the poet's than 
 eight stanzas on " William Penn," written at 
 the age of sixteen. These lines are surprisingly 
 strong considering the circumstances of their 
 production. Three of the verses are as follows : 
 
 Founder of Pennsylvania ! Thou 
 
 Didst feel it, when thy words of peace 
 
 Smoothed the stern chieftain's swarthy brow, 
 And bade the dreadful war-dance cease. 
 
 On Schuylkill's banks no fortress frowned, 
 The peaceful cot alone was there ; 
 
 No beacon fiu-es the hill-tops crowned, 
 No Death-shot swept the Delaware. 
 
48 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 In manners meek, in precepts mild, 
 Tliou and thj' friends serenely taught 
 
 The savage huntsman, fierce and wild, 
 To raise to heaven his erring thought. 
 
 We are more concerned, however, with 
 Whittier's first 'puhlished poem, the identity 
 of which is beyond donbt. It was entitled 
 "The Deity," and was written when Whittier 
 was nineteen ; strange to say its appearance 
 in the poetical corner of the Newburyport 
 "Free Press" was wholly unlocked for by the 
 author. His elder sister Mary, who seems to 
 have understood her brother, and to have 
 taken a pride in his abilities, had sent off the 
 verses to that journal, and the first knowledge 
 that Whittier had of it was the postman's 
 handing him the paper containing his piece 
 while he was mending a stone fence. 
 
 A few days after, when hoeing in a corn- 
 field, Whittier was summoned by messenger 
 to the house to see a stranger who desired to 
 speak with him. This was no other than Wil- 
 liam Lloyd Garrison, who was only three years 
 
THE TOTING IDEA. 49 
 
 Whittier's senior, and the editor of the " Free 
 Press," Struck with the merit of "Whittier's 
 poem, and learning that it was the work of 
 a mere lad, he had been sufficiently interested 
 to drive over and seek out the would-be poet. 
 The youth was overwhelmed with confusion 
 and secret pride when Garrison not only spoke 
 words of encouragement to him. but immedi- 
 ately began to enforce on his father the desira- 
 bility of giving his son a school training. 
 The elder Whitiier, however, remonstrated with 
 Garrison for " putting notions in the boy's 
 head," and it would appear that he had not, 
 as a fact, the means for carrying out Garrison's 
 suggestions. But the Whittier household had 
 been deeply impressed, for young Garrison's 
 delivery of his sentiments was such as to carry 
 conviction. It is not surprising to learn that 
 in the same year all difficulties were overcome, 
 and the lad left his home for Haviland Academy, 
 only returning to his father's roof at the 
 week-ends. Here Whittier studied in the 
 ordinary grooves. It is said that when he 
 
 4 
 
50 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 handed to his master his first composition in 
 prose, that gentleman could hardly be per- 
 suaded that it was the unaided effort of his 
 pupil, but became fully convinced as, week 
 by week, Whittier sent essays of equal or 
 superior merit. 
 
 Whittier's grit at this time is shown in 
 the fact that at the end of this first six months' 
 schooling he had not exceeded by a cent his 
 estimated expenses, still retaining the quarter 
 dollar which had been his surplus at the 
 
 beginning. 
 
 He lodged with the family of Mr. Abijah 
 Wyman Thayer, the editor and publisher of 
 the " Haverhill Gazette," and enjoyed the use 
 of his library, where he often became so ab- 
 sorbed in the books he found there as to be 
 insensible to the noise of the children playing 
 around him. He had a good friend, too, in 
 Dr. Elias Weld, who also allowed him the run 
 of his books. Whittier wrote of him, " He was 
 the one cultivated man of the neighbourhood," 
 and it is he who is referred to in the passage 
 
THE YOUXG IDEA. 51 
 
 in " Snow Bound " — 
 
 The wise old Doctor went his round, 
 Just pausing at our door to saj', 
 In the brief autocratic waj- 
 Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
 Was free to ui-ge her claim on all. 
 
 That some poor neighbour sick abed 
 At night our mother's aid would need. 
 For, one in generous thought and deed. 
 
 What mattered in the suiferer's sight 
 
 The Quaker matron's inward light 
 The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
 All hearts confess the saints elect 
 
 Who, twain in faith, in love agree. 
 And melt not in an acid sect 
 
 The Christian pearl of charity ! 
 
 The following interesting account of Whittier 
 at this period is extracted from a letter addressed 
 by Mrs. Harriet M. Pitman, of Somerville, 
 Mass., to Francis H. Underwood, in whose 
 biography of Whittier it appears ; — '• He went 
 to school awhile at Haverhill Academy. There 
 were pupils of all ages, from ten to twenty- 
 five. My brother, George Minot, then about 
 ten years old, used to say that Whittier was 
 the best of all the big fellows, and he was 
 
52 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 in the habit of calling him 'Uncle Toby. 
 Whittier was always kind to children, and 
 under a very grave and quiet exterior there 
 was a real love of fun, and a keen sense of 
 the ludicrous. In society he was embarrassed, 
 and his manners were in consequence 
 sometimes brusque and cold. With intimate 
 friends he talked a great deal, and in a won- 
 derfully interesting manner ; usually earnest, 
 often analytical, and frequently playful. He 
 had a great deal of wit. It was a family 
 characteristic. The study of human nature 
 w'as very interesting to him, and his insight 
 w^as keen. He liked to draw out his young 
 friends, and to suggest puzzling doubts and 
 queries. . . . One could never flatter him. 
 I never tried, but I have seen people attempt 
 it, and it was a signal failure. He did not 
 flatter, but told very wholesome and unpalatable 
 truths, yet in a way to spare one's self-love 
 by admitting of a doubt whether he was in 
 jest or earnest. ... He had a retentive 
 memory and a marvellous store of information 
 
THK YOUNG IDEA. ^^O 
 
 Oil many subjects. I once saw a little common- 
 place book of his,— full of quaint things, and 
 as interesting as Southey's." 
 
 A schoolfellow, since become a minister, 
 has thus written of Whittier as he remembers 
 him at Haviland : — 
 
 "I remember him as a big boy whom we 
 were all proud to know, and by whom we all 
 esteemed it the greatest of honours to be noticed. 
 Many and many a time I remember seeing his 
 slate going about from hand to hand with some 
 little poem that he had struck off in school. 
 1 used always to deem it an exquisite pleasure, 
 as well as a deep honour if the slate were 
 passed to me. I do not remember if Mr. Whittier 
 ever approved of this proceeding on the part 
 of his schoolmates. He was always modest in 
 showing hie productions, and when his slate 
 was passed on from hand to hand, as I have 
 told you, it was generally the result of some 
 breach of confidence on the part of some one 
 of his particular friends who sat near him. 
 These verses were often of a humorous nature, 
 
54 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and often had as subjects things to be found 
 in the schoolroom. Many, however, were of 
 a more serious and thoughtful character." 
 
 Whittier taught for a while at West Ames- 
 bury and then returned to the Academy for 
 another six months' study. In the autumn of 
 1828 he left, and through the good offices of 
 his old friend Garrison, was invited to Boston 
 to write for the "American Manufacturer." In 
 June, 1829, he returned home, his services being 
 needed on the farm, and there remained for the 
 next year. But he did not drop his pen. In the 
 first half of the year 1830 he edited the Haverhill 
 "Gazette" in his leisure, and at this time he 
 was contributing articles and poems to a more 
 important paper, the " New England Review " 
 of Hartford, Connecticut, edited by George D. 
 Prentice. Much to his surprise he was soon 
 afterwards asked to edit this paper while Mr. 
 Prentice was away in Kentucky. " I could not 
 have been more utterly astonished," said Whittier, 
 " if I had been told that I had been appointed 
 prime minister to the great Khan of Tartary." 
 
THE TOUXG IDEA. 55 
 
 The directors of the paper, on seeing Whittier, 
 were much surprised at his youth. " But," 
 says a biographer, " he discreetly kept silence, 
 letting them do most of the talking. Here 
 most assuredly his Quaker doctrine of silence 
 stood him in good stead ; since, if we may 
 believe him, he was most wofully deficient in 
 a knowledge of the intricacies of the political 
 situation of the time." 
 
 We see by the following extract, taken 
 from the " New England Review " in 1829 
 (before his appointment to the editorship) that 
 Whittier had laid the foundations of his fame 
 before his twenty-second year. 
 J. G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " ' The culmination of that man's fame 
 will be a proud period in the history of our 
 literature.' This generous tribute to the abilities 
 of our friend Whittier was contained in a letter 
 which we recently received from one of the 
 most distinguished men in the country. The 
 
 tribute was merited Whittier is a 
 
 poet and a Christian." 
 
56 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Whittier is now fairly launched in literary 
 life, with the responsibilities of manhood des- 
 cending on him ; this chapter therefore may fitly 
 close with part of a poem written in 1830, the 
 year of his appointment as Editor of the Hart- 
 ford paper. This piece, entitled " The Quaker- 
 ess," was suppressed by the poet with others 
 which his riper judgment condemned, but the 
 lines quoted have a reflected biographical in- 
 terest that seems to warrant their introduction 
 
 here. 
 
 Unadorned, 
 Save by her youthful charms, and with a garb 
 Simple as Nature's self, why tm-n to her 
 The proud and gifted, and the versed in all 
 The pageantry of fashion ? 
 
 She hath not 
 Moved down the dance to music, when the hall 
 Is lighted up like sunshine, and the thrill 
 Of the light viol and the mellow flute. 
 And the deep tones of manhood, softened down 
 To very music, melt upon the ear. 
 She has not mingled with the hollow world 
 Nor tampered with its mockeries, until all 
 The delicate perceptions of the heart, 
 The innate modesty, the watchful sense 
 Of maiden dignity, are lost within 
 The maze of fashion and the din of crowds. 
 
THE YOUNG IDEA. 57 
 
 In the chastened beauty of that eye, 
 
 And in the beautiful play of that red lip, 
 
 And in the quiet smile, and in the voice 
 
 Sweet as the tuneful greeting of a bird 
 
 To the first flowers of spring-time, there is more 
 
 Than the perfection of the painter's skill 
 
 Or statuary's moulding. Mind is there. 
 
 The pure and lofty attributes of soul. 
 
 The seal of virtue, the exceeding grace 
 
 Of meekness blended with a maiden pride ; 
 
 Nor deem ye that beneath the gentle smile, 
 
 And the calm temper of a chastened mind 
 
 No warmth of passion kindles, and no tide 
 
 Of quick and earnest feeling courses on 
 
 From the warm heart's pulsations. 
 
 There are springs 
 Of deep and pm-e aft'ection, hidden now 
 Within that quiet bosom, which but wait 
 The thrilling of some kindly toucli, to flow 
 Like waters from the Desert-rock of old. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEW OF YOUTH. 
 
 ' I wait and watch ; before my eyes 
 
 Methinks the night grows thin and grey ; 
 I wait and watch the eastern skies 
 To see the golden spears uprise 
 Beneath the oriflamme of day ! 
 * * * 
 
 O power to do ! O baffled will ! 
 O prayer and action ! ye are one 
 
 Who may not strive may yet fulfil 
 The harder task of standing stiU, 
 And good but wished with God is done." 
 
 "Waiting." 
 
 " In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, 
 there already blooms a certain i^rospective paradise, cheered 
 by some fairest Eve. Perhaps the whole is but the lovelier, 
 if Cherubim and the Flaming Sword divide it from all 
 footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, 
 
 only the view, not the entrance 
 
 Carlyle. 
 
 A AMERICAN poetry aud American journalism 
 
 were young in 1830 ; but the first 
 
 was distinguished by the feebleness and the 
 
 second by the roughness of juvenility. Whit- 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 59 
 
 tier, as a candidate for honours in both, 
 occupied the position of nearly every young 
 American poet both then and since ; and 
 we can see how this doubling of parts was 
 adding to the strength and versatility of his 
 intellect in these eighteen months at Hartford 
 before he received his call to 
 
 A strife so long, 
 That, ere it closed, the black abundant hair, 
 Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare 
 On Manhood's temples. 
 
 Whittier's qualifications for the editorship 
 of the " New England Weekly Review " were, 
 as we have said, at least doubtful ; he him- 
 self appears to have considered his knowledge 
 of public affairs inadequate, but not caring 
 to lose the opportunity, he boldly went for- 
 ward, and accepted the post. 
 
 George Prentice bade farewell to his readers 
 in the issue of the paper dated July 5, 1830, 
 and wrote, — 
 
 " Mr. J. G. Whittier, an old favourite with 
 the public, will probably have charge of the 
 
60 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Review in my absence, and I cannot do less 
 than congratulate my readers on the prospect 
 of their more familiar acquaintance with a 
 gentleman of such powerful energies, and such 
 exalted purity and sweetness of character. I 
 have made some enemies among those whose 
 good opinion I value, but no rational man 
 can ever be the enemy of Mr. Whittier." 
 
 Files of the " New England Weekly 
 Review " are not to be found at the British 
 Museum ; if they were they might afford 
 interesting matter for comment. It is said 
 that under Whittier's editorship the paper, as 
 we might confidently expect, was free from the 
 personalities then carried to such extremes in 
 American newspapers. Whittier's contributions, 
 other than editorials, included more than forty 
 poems and a large number of sketches and 
 tales in prose. These poems were ruthlessly 
 suppressed by Whittier in later life, with three 
 exceptions. The "Vaudois Teacher" is included 
 in all editions ; after translation into French it 
 became a favourite among the Waldenses, who, 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 
 
 61 
 
 for many years, supposed it to be the work 
 of a French author; but when they learned 
 its true origin they sent a grateful address to 
 Whittier. " The Star of Bethlehem " and 
 " The Frost Spirit " have also passed into the 
 permanent collections of Whittier's verse. 
 
 Some of these sketches and poems, with 
 others not contributed to the Review, were 
 published in 1831 in a thin duodecimo volume, 
 and this was Whittier's first book. Both prose 
 and poetry are indifEercnt, but the legends 
 preserved are valuable for their own sake ; 
 one of them is of a spectre ship, said to have 
 sailed on her last fateful voyage from Salem 
 with a pair of lovers on board. 
 
 At this time Whittier gave further evi- 
 dence of his interest in the legendary lore 
 of " New England " by writing an introduction 
 to the "Remains" of his friend J. G- C. 
 Brainard. Brainard died young, and, with 
 him, the promise of a poet. Whittier edited 
 his poems as a friend anxious to commend 
 them to the world, yet his desire to be an 
 
62 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 honest critic is very apparent. The introduc- 
 tion is interesting as a specimen of Whittier's 
 style, and as showing the extent of his reading 
 which was more than ordinarily wide. In 
 thirty-six pages Whittier gives proof of his 
 acquaintance with Locke, Newton, Akenside, 
 Blackstone, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Goethe, and other authors. The 
 following j)assage is interesting — 
 
 " It has often been said that the New 
 World is deficient in the elements of poetry 
 and romance ; that its bards must of necessity 
 linger over the classic ruins of other lands ; 
 and draw their sketches of character from 
 foreign sources, and paint Nature under the 
 soft beauty of an Eastern sky. On the con- 
 trary, New England is full of Romance ; and 
 her writers would do well to follow the ex- 
 ample of Brainard. The great forest which 
 our fathers penetrated — the red men — their 
 struggle and their disappearance — the Powwow 
 and the war-dance — the savage inroad and the 
 English sally — the tale of superstition and the 
 
THE DEW OF TOtJTH. 63 
 
 scenes of ^-itchcraft— all these are rich ma- 
 terials of poetry. We have indeed no classic 
 vale of Tempe — no haunted Parnassus — no 
 temple, grey with years, and hallowed by the 
 gorgeous pageantry of idol worship— no towers 
 and castles over whose moonlit ruins gathers 
 the green pall of the ivy. But we have moun- 
 tains pillaring a sky as blue as that which 
 bends over classic Olympus ; streams as bright 
 and beautiful as those of Greece and Italy, 
 and forests richer and nobler than those which 
 of old were haunted by Sylph and Dryad." 
 
 In ^larch, 1831, Whittier went to see the old 
 folks at Haverhill. The journey from Hartford 
 was a long and fatiguing one, and at the end of it 
 he ^\-rote in a strain of lively self-banter— " I 
 have had a shocking time of it, and ever since 
 have dreamed of stages upset, of ten-feet snow- 
 drifts, and mud immeasurable and interminable. 
 Every bone in my body aches at the bare idea 
 of my journey. I would as soon ride bare- 
 backed the Rozinante of Don Quixote. . . . 
 A conveyance in that rascally French diligence 
 
64 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 which Sterne complains of would be a luxnry 
 to it ; and I can easily imagine how poor Sancho 
 Panza must have suffered while tossed in the 
 blanket by the muleteers at the enchanted inn. 
 When I left Hartford I was neither more nor 
 less than a disciple of Penn and Ellwood, but 
 before I reached the end of my journey I was 
 to all intents and purposes a shaking Quaker." 
 
 In the same letter, quoted by Mr. Under- 
 wood, Whittier writes :— " And where, you will 
 ask, are my sentimentalisms and love adven- 
 tures ? Alas, my dear fellow, these are not 
 
 the days of romance But I can say 
 
 that I have clasped more than one fair hand, 
 and read my welcome in more than one bright 
 eye since my arrival." 
 
 Here it seems appropriate to say the little 
 that is to be said about Whittier's love-story, 
 as it may be conveniently called. 
 
 Only a few golden threads straying through 
 his poetry betray what of romance there was 
 in his life, or hint at what might have been. 
 It would have been natural to suppose that 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 65 
 
 a young man, early conspicuous by his ability 
 and graces of character, would have found 
 one with whom to 
 
 Walk this world 
 Yoked in all exercise of noble thought. 
 
 But such was not the case, and to the 
 end of his long life Whittier remained single. 
 The causes of this are not for us to explore, 
 yet it would be as improper for the biographer 
 to make no use of the clues which the poet 
 has himself given to the secret, as it would 
 be to push conjecture beyond the veil he has 
 dropped. 
 
 From an early age Whittier's qualities of 
 heart and head made him a favourite with 
 the opposite sex. When at Haverhill Academy 
 "the gatherings of young people," says one, 
 who remembers him there, " were never thought 
 complete without Whittier ; and the young 
 ladies of the school and village were never 
 quite so happy as when they were invited 
 to meet him at a tea-party." 
 
 We can therefore understand the warmth 
 
66 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 of his greeting on all hands when he again 
 set foot in Haverhill in 1831, a handsome 
 young man of twenty-three, and famous already 
 for several hundred miles round. Possibly it 
 was out of the social events of this visit 
 that there arose the feelings which prompted 
 him to write, a few months later, a poem, 
 entitled, "Isabel." 
 
 I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art most 
 
 fair, 
 I know the tempting of thy lips, the witchcraft of 
 
 thy hair, 
 The winsome smile that might beguile the shy bird 
 
 from his tree, 
 But from their spell I know so well, I shake my 
 
 manhood free. 
 
 I might have loved thee, Isabel ; I know I should 
 
 if aught 
 Of all thy words and ways had told of one unselfish 
 
 thought ; 
 If through the cloud of fashion, the pictured veil of 
 
 art. 
 One casual flash had broken warm, earnest from the 
 
 heart. 
 
 But words are idle, Isabel, and if I praise or blame. 
 Or cheer or warn, it matters not ; thy life will be 
 the same ; 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 67 
 
 Still free to use, and still abuse, unmindful of the 
 
 harm, 
 The fatal gift of beauty, the power to choose and 
 
 charm. 
 Then go thy way, fair Isabel, nor heed that fi-om thy 
 
 train 
 A doubtful follower falls away, enough will still 
 
 remain. 
 But what the long-rebuking years may bring to them 
 
 or thee, 
 No prophet and no prophet's son am I to guess or 
 
 see. 
 
 I do not love thee, Isabel ; I would as soon put on 
 A crown of slender frost-work beneath the heated sun, 
 Or chase the winds of summer, or trust the sleeping 
 
 sea, 
 Or lean upon a shadow as think of loving thee. 
 
 Here we seem to listen to the expression 
 of a youthful disenchantment soon to be for- 
 gotten, but the lines show the moral earnest- 
 ness Whittier carried into his love-making. 
 
 It is in a poem written several years later 
 that nearly all students of Whittier's poetry are 
 agreed to find the veiled tragedy, if tragedy 
 it were, of the poet's life. The poem is en- 
 titled, "Memories," and is quoted entire:— 
 
68 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 MEMORIES. 
 
 A beautiful and happy girl, 
 
 With step as light as summer air, 
 Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
 Shadowed by many a careless curl 
 
 Of unconfined and flowing hair ; 
 A seeming child in everything, 
 
 Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms, 
 As Nature wears the smile of Spring 
 
 When sinking into summer's arms. 
 
 A mind rejoicing in the light 
 
 Which melted through its graceful bower. 
 Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright. 
 And stainless in its holy white, 
 
 Unfolding like a morning flower : 
 A heart, which, like a fine -toned lute. 
 
 With every breath of feeling woke. 
 And, even when the tongue was mute. 
 
 From eye and lip in music spoke. 
 
 How thrills once more the lengthening chain 
 
 Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 
 Old hopes, which long in dust have lain, 
 Old dreams, come thronging back again, 
 
 And boyhood lives again in me ; 
 I feel its glow upon my cheek. 
 
 Its fulness of the heart is mine. 
 As when I learned to hear thee speak, 
 
 Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 69 
 
 I hear again thy low replies, 
 
 I feel thy arm within my own, 
 And timidly again uprise 
 The fringed lids of hazel eyes. 
 
 With soft brown tresses overblown. 
 Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves. 
 
 Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
 Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 
 
 And smiles and tones more dear than they ! 
 
 Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 
 
 My picture of thy youth to see. 
 When, half a woman, half a child 
 Thy very artlessness beguiled. 
 
 And folly's self seemed wise in thee ; 
 I too can smile, when o'er that hour 
 
 The lights of memories backward stream, 
 Yet feel the while that manhood's power 
 
 Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. 
 
 Years have passed on, and left their trace 
 
 Of graver care and deeper thought ; 
 And unto me the calm, cold face 
 Of manhood, and to thee the grace 
 
 Of woman's pensive beautj' brought. 
 More wide, perchance, for blame than praise, 
 
 The School-boys humble name has flown ; 
 Thine, in the green and quiet ways 
 
 Of unobtrusive goodness known. 
 
 And wider yet in thought and deed 
 Diverge our pathways, one in youth ; 
 
70 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, 
 While answers to mj^ spirit's need 
 
 The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
 For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 
 
 And holy day, and solemn psalm ; 
 For me, the silent reverence where 
 
 My bretlii-en gather, slow and calm. 
 
 Yet hath thy spirit left on me 
 
 An impress Time has worn not out, 
 And something of myself in thee, 
 A shadow from the past, I see. 
 
 Lingering, even yet, thy way about ; 
 Not wholly can the heart unlearn 
 
 That lesson of its better hours. 
 Nor yet has Time's dull footstep worn 
 
 To common dust that path of flowers. 
 
 Thus while at times before our eyes 
 
 The shadows melt, and fall apart, 
 And, smiling through them, round us lies 
 The warm light of our morning skies, — 
 
 The Indian Summer of the heart ! — 
 In secret sympathies of mind, 
 
 In founts of feeling which retain 
 Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find 
 
 Our early dreams not wholly vain ! 
 
 The full depth of meaning in this beauti- 
 ful poem is not for us, yet, once known, the 
 "brown tresses" of the New England maiden 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 71 
 
 haunt our thoughts of Whittier, like the golden 
 hair of Alice Winn flashing across Elia's 
 melancholy page. 
 
 Even more enigmatical is the poem entitled 
 " The Henchman," written by the poet in his 
 seventieth year. Any disposition to regard 
 this effusion as a mere idle imitation of 
 mediaeval poesy is defeated by its suppressed 
 fervour and by its concentration and finish, 
 rivalling some choice Elizabethan lyric ; while 
 coming from a poet who had left fifty years 
 behind him the dubious culte of "art for art's 
 sake," it can scarcely have had other source 
 than some old well-8j)ring of love. Further 
 we dare not inquire ; " the heart knoweth its 
 own bitterness, neither doth the stranger inter- 
 meddle therewith." 
 
 THE HENCHMAN. 
 My lady walks her morning round, 
 My lady's page lier fleet greyhound, 
 My lady's hair the fond winds stir, 
 And all the bird's make songs for her. 
 
 Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers, 
 And Rathburn side is gay with flowers ; 
 
72 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird, 
 Was beauty seen or music heard. 
 
 The distance of the stars is hers ; 
 The least of all her worshippers, 
 The dust beneath her dainty heel, 
 She knows not that I see or feel. 
 
 proud and calm ! — she cannot know 
 Where'er she goes with her I go, 
 
 cold and fair ! — she cannot guess 
 
 1 kneel to share her hound's caress ! 
 
 Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk, 
 I rob their ears of her sweet talk ; 
 Her suitors come from east and west, 
 I steal her smiles from every guest. 
 
 Unheard of her, in loving words, 
 I greet her with the song of birds ; 
 I reach her with her green-armed bowers, 
 1 kiss her with the lips of flowers. 
 
 The hound and I are on her trail. 
 The wind and I uplift her veil ; 
 As if the calm cold moon she were, 
 And I the tide, I follow her. 
 
 As unrebuked as they, I share 
 The licence of the sun and air, 
 And in a common homage hide 
 My worship from her scorn and pride. 
 
 World-wide apart, and yet so near, 
 I breathe her charmed atmosphere, 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 
 
 73 
 
 Wherein to her my service brings 
 The reverence due to holy things. 
 
 Her maiden pride, her haughty name, 
 My dumb devotion shall not shame ; 
 The love that no return doth crave 
 To knightly levels lifts the slave. 
 
 No lance have I, in joust or fight. 
 To splinter in my lady's sight ; 
 But, at her feet, how blest were I 
 For any need of hers to die. 
 
 This poem, whatever its inspiration, must 
 be numbered among those by which posterity 
 will appraise the genius of the " Quaker Poet." 
 
 Whittier's stay at Haverhill was prolonged 
 owing to the illness of his father, who passed 
 away in July, 1831. The poet was obliged 
 to return to his active duties at Hartford, 
 leaving his mother and sisters, for the present, 
 to lament his cheery presence at the old fire- 
 side with its vacant chair. 
 
 But he was soon with them again. His 
 health had never been equal to his conscien- 
 tious diligence, and he must often have sighed 
 
74 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 to put his brains to higher work than newspaper 
 writing, in which the hurry, inseparable from 
 journalism, defeated all ambition to reason justly 
 and to write with elegance. 
 
 The following glowing lines, written at 
 this time, reveal the young poet's aspirations. 
 
 Land of my fathers ! if the 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 wliich quicken now 
 The tlirobbing pulse of heart and brow, 
 Hereafter take a real form, 
 Like spectres changed to beings warm. 
 
 And over temples warm and gray 
 The star-like crown of glory shine, 
 
 Thine be the bard's undying lay. 
 The murmur of his praise be thine ! 
 
 One does not criticise such lines. Nor 
 can they be understood but by recalling our 
 " volcanic " days, when our own secret imagin- 
 ings were of future fame and applause, and the 
 
THE DEW OF YOUTH. 75 
 
 spirit, unyoked as yet to actual and possible 
 tasks, wandered, fancy free, into the favours 
 and honours of the world. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THROUGH THE FIRE. 
 
 " God said : ' Break thou these yokes ; 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 ease, 
 
 Put thou the scholar's promise by, 
 The rights of man are more than these, 
 
 He heard, and answered : ' Here am I !' " 
 
 "Sumner." 
 
 "The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment." 
 
 Emekson. 
 
 "fT^^HITTIER had never lost sight of his 
 old friend and helper, William Lloyd 
 Garrison. That young soldier of journalism, 
 after leaving the Newburyport " Free Press," 
 had gone to Boston, where he was soon 
 engaged in editing a temperance paper. While 
 in this city he met Benjamin Lundy, a Baltimore 
 Friend and pioneer of Abolitionism, whose 
 Anti-Slavery journal, " The Genius of Universal 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 77 
 
 Emancipation," had been, since 1812, the weak 
 and solitary voice raised in the press against 
 the Slave evil ; even it pleaded only for the 
 gradual extinction of the system, 
 
 Benjamin Lnndy, a Quaker 'of the " old 
 Foxian orgasm," had come into New Eng- 
 land to try to enlist the clergy in the cause 
 he held sacred, but failing to do so, his dis- 
 appointment was bitter. In this situation he 
 stumbled on young Garrison. His words were 
 not lost here, and two years later, in 1831, 
 Garrison joined him in the management of the 
 
 paper. 
 
 Let us interrupt our narrative with a ques- 
 tion, and its answer. What, briefly, was the 
 pedigree of the Anti-Slavery movement ? Some- 
 thing as follows : — 
 
 In 1620 two ships lowered their sails in 
 American rivers ; the pilgrim fathers were 
 aboard one ; the other disgorged a score of 
 African slaves. Thus at the very beginning 
 were the tares sown with the wheat. From 
 that time till the Declaration of Independence, 
 
78 JOHN G, WHITTIER. 
 
 the importation of slaves went on, encouraged 
 by England, until 300,000 black men had made 
 the voyage from Africa to the States, from 
 liberty to chains. 
 
 Prudential considerations at length began to 
 suggest that some limits should be set to these 
 numbers, and several States imposed taxes on 
 slave-importations, while Massachussetts endeav- 
 oured, in 1771, to abolish the trade entirely 
 within her borders. But all these acts were 
 persistently thwarted by England, and the evil 
 flourished until its roots had struck deep into 
 the national life. 
 
 Very early did the voice of the Society 
 of Friends pierce public apathy with its protest 
 against " the wild and guilty fantasy that man 
 can hold property in man." John Woolman, 
 Anthony Benezet, Elias Hicks, Benjamin Lundy, 
 Levi Coffin, and many others, were the Society's 
 spokesmen and henchmen in the cause. Then 
 came with the growth of moral sentiment 
 the formation of Anti-slavery Societies, of 
 which several were started in the last decade 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 
 
 79 
 
 of the 18th century. We hear, too, the voices 
 of statesmen rising on the side of Abolition. 
 Jefferson foresaw the inevitable conflict be- 
 tween right and wrong; "I tremble for my 
 country," he cried, "when I remember that 
 God is just." In 1787 we find free and slave 
 states distinguished by Congress. In 1831 
 Kat Turner's conspiracy and the massacre of 
 sixty whites brought slavery to the front in 
 the Virginia Legislature and remarkable utter- 
 ances were heard. Said one member, "I 
 thank God that the spell is broken, and that 
 we now, for the first time, can say what we 
 think. If slavery can be eradicated, in God's 
 name let us put an end to it." 
 
 These were but rumblings of the ap- 
 proaching storm. The masses shrank to the 
 last from the giant problem; it was found 
 that wholesale releases of slaves were dangerous 
 to order, and many believed that Abolition 
 would upset commercial economy. In the 
 South, especially, men's ears were "stuffed 
 with cotton" against the rising cry for Abo- 
 
80 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 lition. Thus a policy of laissez faire ruled 
 when Garrison listened to Benjamin Lundy's 
 earnest, almost prayerful, words in Boston. 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison was a great man 
 in waiting. Friend and foe alike were to 
 feel his unsuspected might. " One of God's 
 nobility," Harriet Martineau called him, 
 " covered all over with the stars and orders 
 of the spiritual realm." He assailed fearfully, 
 and was unassailable. 
 
 When Garrison put his hand to Benja- 
 min Lundy's paper it was to reconstruct it. 
 There must be no temporising, no fractional 
 work. " Unconditional emancipation is the 
 immediate duty of the master, and the imme- 
 diate right of the slave." This word went 
 through America ; Garrison meanwhile lying 
 in prison for it. On his speedy release, 
 to which Whittier contributed, the intrepid 
 journalist decided to go to Boston. Here he 
 immediately founded the " Liberator." A 
 truly earth-shaking trumpet blast was now 
 sounded across the roofs of Boston, to be 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 81 
 
 carried on every wind to a nation's ear. 
 " I am aware that many object to the 
 severity of my language, but is there not 
 cause for severity ? I will be as harsh as 
 truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On 
 this subject I do not wish to think, or 
 speak, or write with moderation. No ! No ! 
 Tell a man whose house is on fire to give 
 a moderate alarm ; tell the mother to gradually 
 extricate her babe from the fire into which 
 it has fallen ; but urge me not to use mode- 
 ration in a cause like the present. / am 
 in earnest — I will not equivocate — / will not 
 excuse — / ivill not retreat a single inch — and 
 I ivill he heardy 
 
 " The whole land," we are told, " was 
 speedily filled with excitement, the apathy 
 of years was broken, and the new dispensa- 
 tion of immediatism was justified by results." 
 
 Yet these thunderbolts were hurled from 
 a hole of an office, where Garrison alternately 
 wielded the pen and composing stick, assisted 
 by one man, Isaac Knapp of Newburyport, 
 
82 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and a negro boy. Lowell's picture is touching. 
 
 In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 
 Toiled o'er his type, one poor unlearned man, 
 
 The place was dark, uufurnitured and mean, 
 Yet there the freedom of a race began. 
 
 Truth ! fi-eedom ! low are ye still born. 
 In the rude stable, in the manger nursed; 
 
 What humble hands unbar these gates of morn. 
 Through which the splendour of the new day 
 burst. 
 
 small beginnings, ye are great and strong. 
 Based on a faithful heart and a weariless brain. 
 
 Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 
 Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain. 
 
 Here, then, was something to greaten life 
 for young spirits— the inception of a glorious 
 cause, and a challenge to the friends of 
 freedom and justice to present themselves in 
 the light of the sun for warfare, and always 
 warfare, until this hoary wrong should be 
 done away. 
 
 Whittier was at Haverhill. He was com- 
 forting his bereaved mother and sisters, and 
 working hard with his pen, now enlisted in 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 83 
 
 the service of Buckingham's "New England 
 Magazine" of Boston. 
 
 Already he had thought much on the slave 
 question, and indeed, had made a close study 
 of its historical and ethical aspects. Yet his 
 interest in it was clearly somewhat academical. 
 He was in fact settling to the idea of a life 
 of congenial literary work and large leisure. 
 Garrison all the while saw this from his 
 stronghold, and grieved. In a letter he ^^Tote 
 in 1833 to three Haverhill young ladies, he 
 approached them on the point :— " You excite 
 my curiosity and interest by informing me that 
 my dearly-beloved Whittier is a friend and 
 townsman of yours. Can we not induce him 
 to devote his brilliant genius more to the ad- 
 vancement of our cause, and kindred enter- 
 prises, and less to the creations of romance 
 and fancy, and the disturbing incidents of 
 political life ? " 
 
 Whittier, on his part, had watched Gar- 
 rison's brave doings with generous admiration. 
 Little by little, something was taking hold of 
 
84 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 his heart. As month by month the compara- 
 tive leisure of his home-life was invaded by 
 the sounds of a vast movement among men, 
 the young poet's soul was stirred greatly 
 within him. At last came a call that he dared 
 not disobey — to the baptism wherewith he 
 was to be baptised, and to the mission that 
 he was ordained to accomplish. In 1833 he 
 published, at his own expense, his "Justice 
 and Expediency," and this was the determining 
 act of his life. 
 
 The pamphlet was a scathing one, and the 
 fire that glows in every line is the fire 
 that is soon to break forth in the "Songs of 
 Liberty." It was thus that he rebuked those 
 who urged that New England, having no part 
 in the slave system, was without responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 "Why are we thus willing to believe a 
 lie ? New England not responsible ! Bound 
 by the United States constitution to protect 
 the slave holder in his sins, and yet not re- 
 sponsible ! Palliating the evil, hiding the evil. 
 
THROUGH THK FIBE. 85 
 
 voting for the evil, do we not participate 
 in it ? Members of one confederacy, children 
 of one family, the curse and the shame, this 
 sin against our brother, and the sin against 
 our God,— all the iniquity of slavery which is 
 revealed to man, and all which crieth in the 
 ear, or is manifested in the eye of Jehovah, 
 -will assuredly be visited upon all our people." 
 It is not within the scope of this little 
 book to follow the progress of the Anti-Slavery 
 Cause in the States during the next twenty 
 years. It was withstood in Congress, in the 
 street, in the press ; it was delayed by dis- 
 sensions within ; it was resisted by mobs, 
 and in the end by armies ; and it triumphed. 
 While it lasted the fight was incredibly 
 fierce. "To be shunned and spat upon by 
 society, mobbed in public, and injured in one's 
 business— this was what it was to be an aboli- 
 tionist." Abolitionism meant " self-renunciation 
 and social martyrdom." Garrison himself was 
 dragged through Boston with a rope round 
 his body and with difficulty was saved 
 
86 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 from death ; Elijah P, Lovejoy was killed while 
 defending his printing press ; Marius Robinson 
 was tarred and feathered in Ohio ; Amos Dresser 
 got a flogging at Nashville for no fault ; Whittier 
 himself was beaten in the street and had his 
 office in Philadelphia bnrned down by the 
 mob ; on another occasion the poet barely 
 escaped with his life from a house in Concord, 
 from the windows of which could be seen the 
 murderous gleam of rifles in the moonlit street. 
 
 Whittier stepped into the fray with eyes 
 open, in simple obedience to the direction of 
 that " Light within " which he reverenced above 
 all other ; henceforth we shall see him as one. 
 
 Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 
 And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain. 
 
 In 1833 a National Anti-Slavery Conven- 
 tion met at Philadelphia on December 4th ; 
 Whittier attended, and like the other sixty- 
 two delegates present, signed the famous 
 Declaration drawn up by Garrison. Years 
 after he wrote an interesting account of the 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 87 
 
 proceedings, and drew graphic word portraits 
 of many present ; and there was this pleasing 
 touch.— "In front of me, waking pleasant 
 associations of the old homestead in the 
 Merrimac Valley, sat my first school teacher, 
 Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy anti- 
 quarian and historian of Newbury." 
 
 The story of the great struggle in which 
 Whittier was henceforth to bear his part, is 
 to be found in its detail in Henry Wilson's 
 "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave 
 Power." For most of us, however, it lives in the 
 Quaker poet's lyrics. These Yoices of Free- 
 dom thrill us yet, instinct with the " hate of 
 hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." 
 Their note was nobly struck in the first of 
 them— the " Lines to William Lloyd Garrison." 
 
 Champion of those who groan beneath 
 Oppression's iron hand. 
 
 I love thee with a brother's love, 
 
 I feel my pulses thrill, 
 To mark thy spiiit soar above 
 
88 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 The cloud of human ill. 
 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 ! 
 
 But Whittier's own grim attack was not 
 long delayed. It came in a poem with no other 
 title than " Stanzas," yet surely border ballad 
 never broke forth with such a burden of 
 wrath. 
 
 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 ! 
 A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, — 
 
 A wail where Camden's martyrs fell, — 
 By every shrine of patriot blood. 
 
 From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well ! 
 
 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 ! 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 89 
 
 Shall every flap of England's flag 
 
 Proclaim that all around are free, 
 From " farthest Ind " to each blue crag 
 
 That beetles o'er the Western Sea ? 
 And shall we scofE at Europe's kings, 
 
 When freedom's fii-e is dim with us, 
 And round our country's altar clings 
 
 The damning shade of Slaverj^'s cm-se ? 
 
 Go— let us ask of Constantine 
 
 To loose his grasp on Poland's throat ; 
 And beg the lord of ^Mahmoud's line 
 
 To spare the struggling Suliote, — 
 Will not the scorching answer come 
 
 From Turbaned Tm-k, and scornful Russ : 
 " Go, loose your fettered slaves at home. 
 
 Then turn, and ask the like of us ! " 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, lent greater scorn to 
 Whittier's lines than instances of the clergy 
 gathering to lend their support to Slavery. 
 In 1835, a great pro-Slavery meeting was held 
 in Charleston, and the papers reported,— " The 
 clergy of all denominations attended in a 
 body, lending their sanction to the proceed- 
 ings, and adding by their presence to the im- 
 pressive character of the scene ! " 
 
 Whittier's castigation came swiftly, and 
 
90 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 with the inimitable force of righteous indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 Just God ! — and these are they 
 Who minister at Thine altar, God of Eight ! 
 Men who their liands witla prayer and blessing lay 
 
 On Israel's Ark of light ! 
 
 What ! preach and kidnap men ? 
 Give thanks, — and rob thy own afflicted poor ? 
 Talk of Thy glorious liberty, and then 
 
 Bolt hard the captive's door ? 
 
 What ! servants of Thy own 
 Merciful Son, who came to seek and save 
 The homeless and the outcast, — fettering down 
 
 The tasked and plundered slave ! 
 
 Pilate and Herod, friends ! 
 Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine ! 
 Just God and holy ! is that church, which lends 
 
 Strength to the spoiler. Thine ? 
 
 Paid hypocrites, who turn 
 Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book 
 Of those high words of truth which search and burn 
 In warning and rebuke ; 
 
 Feed fat, ye locusts, feed ! 
 And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord 
 That, fi-om the toUing bondman's utter need. 
 
 Ye pile yom- own full board. 
 
 How long, Lord ! how long 
 Shall such a priesthood barter truth away. 
 
TflROUGfi THE FIRE. 91 
 
 And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong 
 At Thy own altars pray ? 
 
 As easily could the poet take up the heart- 
 cry of the slave, and compel currency for it 
 in the street and the home. Witness the 
 pathetic "Farewell of a Virginia slave-mother 
 to her daughters sold in bondage." — 
 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
 
 Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
 
 Where the noisome insect stings. 
 
 Where the fever demon strews 
 
 Poison with the falling dews. 
 
 Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
 
 Through the hot and misty air, — 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
 From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
 Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 
 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
 There no mother's eye is near them. 
 There no mother's ear can hear them ; 
 Never, when the torturing lash 
 Seams their back with many a gash, 
 Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
 Or a mother's arms caress them. 
 
92 JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
 From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
 Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 
 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
 Oh, when weary, sad, and slow. 
 From the fields at night they go. 
 Faint with toil, and racked with pain, 
 To their cheerless homes again. 
 There no brother's voice shall greet them, — 
 There no father's welcome meet them. 
 Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
 To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
 From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
 Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 
 
 It was not always the stirring philippic, 
 
 the biting satire, or the pathetic story of 
 
 plantation miseries, that enlisted Whittier's pen. 
 
 The martyrs of the cause, and those whom 
 
 Death called from the fray, had their honoured 
 
 names enshrined in these " Voices of Freedom." 
 
 Thus the sudden death of Robert Rantoul, 
 
 who died at his post in Congress, and 
 
 with his last words protested in the name of 
 
 Democracy against the Fugitive-Slave Law, 
 
 evoked a noble tribute from the poet. 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 93 
 
 One day, along the electric wire, 
 
 His manly word for freedom sped. 
 We came next morn : that tongue of fire 
 
 Said only, "He who spake is dead." 
 
 Dead ! he so great and strong and wise, 
 While the mean thousands yet drew breath, 
 
 How deepened, through that dread surprise, 
 The mystery and the awe of death ! 
 
 But when sorrow has had vent, the need- 
 ful trumpet blast awakes repiners to action : 
 
 Men of the North ! your weak regret 
 
 Is wasted here ; arise and pay 
 To freedom and to him your debt. 
 
 By following where he led the way. 
 
 " The Branded Hand '' relates to an instance 
 of suffering for the cause— one among hundreds. 
 Captain Jonathan Walker, a Massachussetts man, 
 while working in Florida as a railway con- 
 tractor, thought much on slavery, and treated 
 those slaves with whom he had to deal with 
 such humanity as to win their devotion. Not 
 satisfied, he took seven of these poor fellows 
 on a risky voyage to the West Indies, hoping 
 to set them free. The party was captured. 
 
94 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and the brave captain pilloried, imprisoned, 
 and branded on his right hand with the letters 
 S.S. (signifying slave-stealer), and finally released 
 only on the payment of 150 dollars by his 
 Massachussetts friends. The homecoming of 
 the gallant captain created a furore of joy, 
 and, as usual, Whittier put a song into the 
 mouths of the people, a right noble song. 
 Let critics call such outbursts mere "rhymed 
 eloquence " if they please ; then let them re- 
 main unmoved by the written line, if they 
 can. 
 
 Welcome home again, brave seaman ! with thy thought- 
 ful brow and gray, 
 
 And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day, — 
 
 With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady 
 nerve in vain 
 
 Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts 
 of pain ! 
 
 Why, that brand is highest honour !— than its traces 
 
 never yet 
 Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon 
 
 set ; 
 And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky 
 
 strand, 
 
THROUGH THK FIRE. 95 
 
 Shall tell with pride the story of their father's 
 
 BRANDED HAND ! 
 
 Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of 
 
 the wave ! 
 Its branded palm shall prophesy, " Salvation to the 
 
 Slave ! " 
 Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads 
 
 may feel 
 His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change 
 
 to steel. 
 Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our 
 
 Northern air, — 
 Ho ! men of Massachussetts, for the love of God, 
 
 look there ! 
 Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's 
 
 heart of yore, 
 In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be 
 
 seen before ! 
 
 Who has not felt his heart beat double 
 to the march and meaning of words like 
 these : — 
 The voice of Massachussetts ! Of her fi-ee sons and 
 
 daughters, — 
 Deep calling unto deep aloud,— the sound of many 
 
 waters ! 
 Against the burden of that voice wliat tyrant power 
 
 shall stand ? 
 No fetters in the Bay State ! No slave upon her laid ! 
 
96 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Look to it well, Virginians ! In calmness we have 
 
 borne, 
 In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and 
 
 youi' scorn ; 
 You've spurned our kindest counsels, you've hunted 
 
 for our lives, — 
 And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles 
 
 and gyves ! 
 
 We wage no war, — we lift no arm, — we fling no torch 
 
 within 
 The lire-damps of the quaking mine beneath yoiu" 
 
 soil of sin ; 
 We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while 
 
 ye can. 
 With the strong upward tendencies and god-like soul 
 
 of man ! 
 
 But for us and for our children, the vow which we 
 
 have given 
 For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven ; 
 No slave-hunt in our borders, — no pirate on our strand! 
 No fetters in the Bay State, — no slave upon our land ! 
 
 What a pen was this ! that to-day was 
 hurriedly plied, and to-morrow millions were 
 stirred or stricken in their hearts. Whittier 
 had no rival, reply was impossible when he 
 smote, nor could any congeal the pitiful 
 tears he drew to eyes often unwilling to 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 97 
 
 weep. The effect of the lyrics can be but 
 half understood by us, for whom the events 
 of these years are blurred by time and distance. 
 Even in America, to-day, the younger genera- 
 tions have no conception of their first effects 
 on the public. "Tell your boys and girls," 
 said Professor Thayer, of Harvard College, 
 to a teacher in the Friends' School in Provi- 
 dence, *' tell your boys and girls, that however 
 much they admire and love Whittier, they 
 cannot know what a fire and passion of en- 
 thusiasm he kindled in the hearts of the little 
 company of Anti-slavery boys and girls of my 
 time, when they read his early poems." 
 
 It should be remembered that these songs 
 were written often in haste, and were with 
 equal haste printed as broadsides, or upon 
 cards, or were read at Anti-Slavery Meetings, 
 or sent to the newspapers. They were meant 
 to strike the iron while hot, to point a great 
 moral as the perception of it grew. They were 
 " the earnest and often vehement expression 
 of the writer's thought and feeling at critical 
 
 r 
 
98 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 periods in the great conflict between Freedom 
 and Slavery . . they were protests, alarm- 
 signals, trumpet-calls to action," To these 
 words the poet added an acknowledgment of 
 what he conceived to be their artistic defects. 
 
 In 1838 Whittier came to Philadelphia to 
 resume those vexing cares of editorship, for 
 which he was, by his standard of health, 
 but ill fitted, yet from which no call of 
 duty might keep him back. Here we soon 
 find him in the thick of the fight, 
 editing the " Freeman." 
 
 No wonder if, heart-weary, he would now 
 and then leave the drouth and discord of 
 the city behind him in long country rambles. 
 In the following lines he strikes that chord 
 of longing for peace and the consolations of 
 green Nature which Matthew Arnold made his 
 own. 
 
 How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze 
 
 To him who flies 
 From crowded street and red walls weary gleam, 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 99 
 
 Till far behind him like a hideous dream 
 The close dark city lies ! 
 
 Here, while the market iiuirmm'S, while men throng 
 
 The marble floor 
 Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din 
 Of the world's madness let me gather in 
 
 My letter thoughts once more. 
 
 Oh, once again revive, while on my ear 
 
 The cry of Gain 
 And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away. 
 Ye blessed memories of my early day 
 
 Like sere grass wet with rain ! — 
 
 Once more let God's green earth and sunset ah 
 
 Old feelings waken ; 
 Through weary years of toil and strife and iU, 
 Oh, let me feel that my good angel still 
 
 Hath not his trust forsaken. 
 
 Oftenest his steps would lead him out 
 to Frankford village, to Ghalkley Hall, the 
 old residence of that "rare sea saint" he 
 had learned to revere at the home hearth. 
 
 Oh, far away beneath New England's sky, 
 
 Even when a boy. 
 Following my plough by Merrimack's green shore, 
 His simple record I have pondered o'er 
 
 With deep and quiet joy. 
 
100 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm, — 
 
 Its woods around, 
 Its still stream winding on in light and shade, 
 Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade, — 
 
 To me is holy ground. 
 
 He needed such moments. In Philadelphia 
 untoward events were at hand. The Anti- 
 slavery people had just built a meeting place, to 
 which they gave the name of Pennsylvania Hall, 
 and besides a large chamber for meetings, the 
 building contained their book-store and the 
 office of the " Freeman." The day of dedi- 
 cation came and went, and there had been no 
 disturbance, but when on the second day an 
 Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women 
 was held, attended by some five hundred women, 
 a mob was soon seething round the hall, and 
 the speeches were made to the accompaniment 
 of crashing windows. " Yet what," cried one 
 speaker — the beautiful Angelina Grimke Weld, 
 — "would the breaking of every window be ? 
 Any evidence that we are wrong, or that 
 slavery is a good or wholesome institution ? 
 What if the mob should now burst in upon 
 
THROUGH THE FIRE. 101 
 
 US, break up our meeting, and commit 
 violence upon our persons — would this be 
 anything compared with what the slaves en- 
 dure ? " It was thus that women championed 
 their bond-sisters in those days. 
 
 The next morning there were more mobs 
 and missiles, and in the evening the crisis ar- 
 rived. What took place need not be related 
 in detail, but the upshot was a bonfire for 
 which the handsome hall and everything in 
 it scarcely provided fuel to glut the mob with 
 red flame and smoking ruins. 
 
 Outrages like these moved the Quaker poet 
 to remembrance of his father's " days of 
 bitterness," and thus, in his ear-compelling 
 rhythms, old wrongs fought new, and evil 
 was made once more to " justify the ways of 
 God to men." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONSCIOUS POWER. 
 
 " Know well, my soul, God's hand controls 
 
 Whate'er thou fearest ; 
 Round Him in calmest music rolls 
 
 Whate'er thou hearest. 
 
 What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 
 
 And the end He knoweth, 
 
 And not on a bUnd and aimless way 
 
 The spirit goeth." 
 
 "Mr SOCL AND I." 
 
 " If the poet have this two-fold goodness, — the drill 
 and the inspiration,— then he has health; then he is a 
 whole, and not a fragment ; and the perfection of his 
 endowment will appear in his compositions." — Emersok. 
 
 TN 1840 Whittier wrote to Joshua Learitt, — 
 " I have just returned to the quiet of 
 my home, and have already barely had 
 leisure to glance over the newspapers which 
 have accumulated during my absence." He 
 goes on to lament certain dissensions in the 
 Anti-Slavery party which had arisen on the 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 103 
 
 question as to how far political machinery 
 ought to be used as a means to reformation. 
 Whittier felt it his duty to exercise his right 
 of citizenship at the ballot box in the cause 
 of Liberty ; Garrison, with equal sincerity 
 judged and counselled otherwise, and the result 
 was a certain amount of coldness between 
 the two. The controversy has lost its interest, 
 but it made sad havoc at the time. In the 
 end the old friendship was restored, and 
 on Garrison's death, Whittier wrote, — "I 
 choose rather with a feeling of gratitude to 
 God, to recall the happiness of labouring 
 with the noble company of whom Garrison 
 was the central figure. I love to think of 
 him as he seemed to me, when, in the fresh 
 dawn of manhood, he sat with me in the 
 old Haverhill farm-house, revolving even then 
 schemes of benevolence .... and in all 
 the varied scenes and situations where we 
 acted together our parts in the great en- 
 deavour and success of Freedom." 
 
 In 1840, the Haverhill homestead was 
 
104 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 sold. Whittier's mother, sister, and aunt there- 
 upon removed to Amesbury, a small town 
 nine miles from Haverhill, with a population 
 of about three thousand. The town is set 
 on a hill side, beneath which the Merrimac 
 glides, hardly more peacefully than did the 
 years through which we are now to trace 
 the poet's footsteps. 
 
 Let us see how the Whittier family circle 
 stood at the time of this removal to Ames- 
 bury. 
 
 John Whittier, we know, had died at 
 Haverhill in 1832, and Moses Whittier, the 
 uncle, in 1824. Matthew Franklin, the poet's 
 brother, was living in Boston, where he died 
 so late as 1883. He was a clerk in the 
 Naval Department of the Boston Custom 
 House, where he is said to have been very 
 popular on account of his humorous turn. 
 He is described as having been " very different 
 from his brother," but to have had the same 
 love of seclusion. Mary, the elder sister, had 
 been married some years to Mr. Jacob Cald- 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 105 
 
 well, of Haverhill. Elizabeth and Aunt Mercy 
 
 Hussey went to Amesbury with the mother. 
 
 But again the circle was broken in 1846, 
 
 in which year Mercy Hussey died, — 
 
 Tlie sweetest woman ever Fate 
 Perverse denied a laousehold mate. 
 
 Elizabeth H. Whittier, the younger sister, 
 lived till 1864, and was her brother's literary 
 companion. She had a share of his genius, 
 too, and Whittier included a few of her 
 poems in his volume " Hazel Blossoms." She 
 was also his co-worker in the Anti-Slavery 
 cause, and on one occasion, at least, ran 
 serious risk of violence at the hands of the 
 
 mob. 
 
 From this time, Whittier's life was un- 
 eventful, and there is little to record but the 
 sure development of his powers. 
 
 We have seen how in the flush of man- 
 hood he had secretly longed to "drink deep 
 of the Pierian Spring." But for a poet, in 
 whom genius was wedded to goodness, there 
 could be no inspiration in the morning mists. 
 
106 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 the river expanse, the eyes of village maidens, 
 nor in themes of home and legendary lore, 
 while the bitter cry of the slave was borne to 
 him on every breeze. His thought was 
 
 Coleridge's, — 
 
 Was it right, 
 While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, 
 That I should dream away th' intrusted hours 
 On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart 
 With feelings all too delicate for use ? 
 
 Whittier we know, felt the disappointment 
 of his hopes. 
 
 Oh not of choice, for themes of public wrong 
 I left the green and pleasant paths of song. 
 More dear to me some song of private worth. 
 Some homely idyll of my native north. 
 
 Even his enlisted pen wandered when, in 
 moments of weariness, his thought would be, 
 "to the old paths my soul!" Thus, he writes — 
 
 I know it has been said our times require 
 
 No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, 
 
 No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform 
 
 To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm. 
 
 But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets 
 
 The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, 
 
 And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 107 
 
 Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys 
 Eelieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet 
 If SO we may, our hearts, even while we eat 
 The bitter harvest of oiu- own device 
 And half-a-century's moral cowardice. 
 
 Whittier did keep his heart sweet, and 
 when his "long harsh strife with strong-willed 
 men " was over, he had won an abiding place 
 in the hearts of his countrymen, who loved 
 the poet the more because they had learned 
 already to love the man. It was in these 
 strenuous years, when his Muse was handmaid 
 to Social Reform, that Whittier won his un- 
 contested title to be called the national poet. 
 
 The growth, then, of Whittier's poetical 
 powers, after 1840, may be said to have been 
 the unfolding of "the plan that pleased his 
 boyish thought," modified, interrupted even, 
 but also stimulated and deepened by those 
 direct calls which suffering humanity continued 
 to make upon his public sympathies. 
 
 Let us endeavour to follow in the main 
 track of the poems, as year by year they added 
 to the poet's fame. 
 
108 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 In 184:0, " Memories," quoted entire in 
 another part of this book, was written, and, 
 in the same year, " Merrimac," a poem in which 
 the old feeling for quiet beauty and rural 
 traditions brake forth unrestrainedly — 
 
 Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 
 
 Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood : 
 
 Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 
 
 Along his frowning Palisade ; 
 
 Looked down the Apalachian peak 
 
 On Juniata's silver streak ; 
 
 Have seen along his valley gleam 
 
 The Mohawk's softly winding stream ; 
 
 The level light of sunset shine 
 
 Through broad Potomac's hem of pine ; 
 
 And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 
 
 Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna ; 
 
 Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, 
 
 Thy wandering child looked back to thee ! 
 
 Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 
 
 Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, 
 
 The unforgotten swell and roar 
 
 Of waves on thy famOiar shore ; 
 
 And saw, amidst the curtained gloom 
 
 And quiet of his lonely room, 
 
 Thy sunset scenes before him pass. 
 
 In 1843 Whittier wrote one of his finest 
 pieces, entitled " Follen." Charles Follen, a 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 109 
 
 young theologian and a friend of Whittier's, 
 had perished at sea, and after reading with 
 mournful interest an essay poor Foil en had 
 written on the Future State, the poet's per- 
 plexed and sorrowing thoughts found vent in 
 this poem which, in lines like the following, 
 reminds us of " In Memoriam." 
 
 But be the prying vision veiled, 
 And let the seeking lips be dumb, — 
 
 Where even seraph eyes have failed 
 Shall mortal blindness seek to come. 
 
 We only know that thou hast gone, 
 
 And that the same returnless tide 
 Which bore thee from us still glides on, 
 
 And we who mourn thee with it gUde. 
 
 On all thou lookest we shall look, 
 And to our gaze ere long shall turn 
 
 That page of God's mysterious book 
 We so much wish yet dread to learn. 
 
 With Him before whose awful power 
 Thy spirit bent its trembling knee: — 
 
 Who in the silent greeting flower, 
 
 And forest leaf ; looked out on thee, — 
 
 We leave thee with a trust serene, 
 
 Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move, 
 While with thy childlike faith we lean 
 
 On Him whose dearest name is Love ! 
 
110 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Other poems of 1843 were " Cassandra 
 Southwick," a stirring Quaker ballad, " Chalkley 
 Hall," and various " Voices of Freedom." 
 These were followed in 1845 by a sheaf of 
 Labour songs. In 1847 Whittier gave proof 
 of the rapid growth of his powers in such 
 pieces as "The Angels of Buena Vista," 
 "Barclay of Ury," "My soul and I," "To 
 my Sister," " Randolph of Roanoke," and 
 " Proem." 
 
 The last named piece is prefixed to most 
 editions of Whittier's poems ; it shows how 
 well Whittier understood his limitations as a 
 poet. 
 
 Of mj-stic beauty, dreamy grace, 
 
 No rounded art the lack supplies ; 
 
 Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 
 Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
 
 I xiew her common forms with unanointed eyes. 
 
 Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
 
 The secrets of the heart and mind ; 
 
 To drop the plummet-line below 
 Our common world of joy and woe, 
 
 A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. Ill 
 
 Yet hei"e 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. 
 
 " Barclay of Ury " is the great ballad of 
 early Quakerism, and it will be well to 
 quote it entire. 
 
 BARCLAY OF URY. 
 
 Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
 By the kirk and college green, 
 
 Rode the Laird of Ury ; 
 Close behind him, close beside. 
 Foul of mouth and evil eyed, 
 
 Pressed the mob in fmy. 
 
 Flouted him the drunken churl, 
 Jeered at him the serving-girl, 
 
 Prompt to please her master , 
 And the begging carlin, late 
 Fed and clothed at Ury's gate. 
 
 Cursed him as he passed her. 
 
 Yet, with calm and stately mien. 
 Up the streets of Aberdeen 
 
 Came he slowly riding : 
 And, to all he saw and heard, 
 Answering not with bitter word. 
 
 Turning not for chiding. 
 
112 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Came a troop with broadswords swinging, 
 Bits and bridles sharply ringing, 
 
 Loose and free and fi-oward ; 
 Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down ! 
 Push him ! prick him ! through the town 
 
 Drive the Quaker Coward ! " 
 
 But f rom out the thickening crowd 
 Cried a sudden voice and loud : 
 " Barclay ! Ho ! a Barclay ! " 
 And the old man at his side 
 Saw a comrade, battle-tried. 
 
 Scarred and simburned darkly ; 
 Who with ready weapon bare, 
 Fronting to the troopers there, 
 
 Cried aloud : " God save us, 
 Call ye coward him who stood 
 Ankle-deep in Lutzen's blood. 
 With the brave Gustavus ? " 
 
 " Xay, I do not need thy sword. 
 Comrade mine," said Ury's lord ; 
 
 " Put it up, I pray thee : 
 Passive to His holy will. 
 Trust I in my Master still, 
 Even though He slay me. 
 
 "Pledges of thy love and faith, 
 Proved on many a field of death, 
 
 Not by me are needed." 
 Marvelled much that henchman bold. 
 That his laird, so stout of old, 
 
 Xow so meekly pleaded. 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 113 
 
 " Woe's the daj- ! " he sadly said, 
 With a slowly shaking head, 
 
 And a look of pity ; 
 " Ury's honest lord reviled, 
 Mock of knave and sport of child. 
 
 In his own good city ! 
 "Speak the word, and, master mine, 
 As we charged on Tilly's line. 
 
 And his Walloon lancers, 
 Smiting through their midst we'll teach 
 Civil look and decent speech 
 
 To these boyish prancers ! " 
 
 " Marvel not, mine ancient friend. 
 Like beginning, like the end," 
 
 Quoth the Laird of Ury ; 
 "Is the sinful servant more 
 Than his gracious Lord who bore 
 
 Bonds and stripes in Jewry ? 
 
 "Give me joy that in His name 
 I can bear, with patient frame. 
 
 All these vain ones ofEer ; 
 While for them He sufEereth long. 
 Shall I answer wrong with wrong, 
 
 Scoffing with the scoffer ? 
 
 " Happier I, with loss of all, 
 Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall. 
 
 With few friends to greet me. 
 Than when reeve and squire were seen. 
 Biding out from Aberdeen, 
 
 With bared heads to meet me. 
 
114 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 " When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, 
 Blessed me as I passed her door ; 
 
 And the snooded daughter, 
 Through her casement glancing down, 
 Smiled on him who bore renown 
 
 From red fields of slaughter. 
 
 " Hard to feel the stranger's scoff. 
 Hard the old friend's falling off. 
 
 Hard to learn forgiving : 
 But the Lord His own rewards. 
 And His love with theirs accords. 
 
 Warm and fresh and living. 
 
 "Through this dark and stormy night 
 Faith beholds a feeble light 
 
 Up the blackness streaking ; 
 Knowing God's own time is best. 
 In a patient hope I rest 
 
 For the full day-breaking ! " 
 
 So the Laird of Ury said, 
 Turning slow his horse's head 
 
 Towards the Tolbooth prison, 
 Where, through iron grates, he heard 
 Poor disciples of the Word 
 
 Preach of Christ arisen ! 
 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 sevenfold vial. 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 
 
 115 
 
 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. 
 
 Knowing this, that never yet 
 Share of Truth was vainly set 
 
 In the world's wide fallow ; 
 After hands shall sow the seed, 
 After hands from hill and mead 
 
 Reap the harvests yellow. 
 
 Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
 ]\Iust the moral pioneer 
 
 From the future borrow ; 
 Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, 
 And, on midnight's sky of rain. 
 
 Paint the golden morrow ! 
 
 In the years 1848, 1849, and 1850, some 
 remarkable poems appeared, including—" The 
 Slaves of Martinique," "The Curse of the 
 Charter Breakers," "P^an," "The Crisis," "The 
 Men of Old," " Ichabod," all of which come 
 under the " Voices of Freedom." A keen 
 critic has boldly pronounced "Ichabod" "the 
 purest and profoundest moral lament in modern 
 literature, whether American or European. It 
 
116 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 is the grief of angels in arms over a traitor 
 brother, slain on the battle-field of heaven." 
 
 The nature of Whittier's work from 1850 
 to 1857 must be indicated in but a few 
 words. Poems of self-examination and spiritual 
 conflict are becoming numerous. Thus in 
 " Questions of Life " the poet starts the old, 
 old enigmas, the questionings of Job under 
 the midnight heavens ; returning to God in 
 the heart, and to the " simple heroic act by 
 which he that believes helievesy 
 
 In these years of increasing and conscious 
 power appeared such fine poems as " First- 
 Day Thoughts," "Tauler," "My Namesake," 
 "Maud Muller," "The Barefoot Boy," "The 
 Conquest of Finland," "The Panorama," 
 " May Garvin," " Skipper Ireson's Ride," " The 
 Last Walk in Autumn," "The Old Biirying 
 Ground," "Telling the Bees," and "The 
 Palm Tree." 
 
 " Maud Muller " increased Whittier's repu- 
 tation greatly, and may be said to have 
 brought it across the Atlantic, for until this 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. H? 
 
 delightful ballad appeared, the poet's readers 
 on this side had been few. Whittier was sur- 
 prised by its success, and remarked to a friend— 
 « If I had had any idea that it would have 
 been so liked, I would have taken more pains 
 with it." On the whole, looking at the per- 
 fection of this piece, we may be glad he did 
 not labour it further. 
 
 Before passing to Whittier's best period 
 a reference to the poem, "My Namesake," 
 seems appropriate. This remarkable piece 
 should be studied by the reader who desires 
 insight into Whittier's character, for in it he 
 reveals himself, as in "Proem" he discusses 
 his work. A few verses must sufdce :— 
 
 In him the grave and playful mixed 
 And wisdom held with folly truce, 
 
 And Nature compromised betwixt 
 Good fellow and recluse. 
 
 He loved his friends, forgave his foes ; 
 
 And if their words were harsh at times 
 He spared his fellow men,— his blows 
 
 Fell only on their crimes. 
 
118 JOHN G. WHlTTIER. 
 
 He loved the good and wise, but found 
 His human heart to all akin, 
 
 Who met him on the common ground 
 Of suffering and sin. 
 
 He had his share of care and pain, 
 No holiday was life to him ; 
 
 Still in the heirloom cup we drain 
 The bitter drop will swim. 
 
 Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird 
 And there a flower beguiled his way ; 
 
 And, cool, in summer noons, he heard 
 The fountains plash and play. 
 
 On all his sad or restless moods 
 The patient peace of Nature stole. 
 
 The quiet of the fields and woods 
 Sank deep into his soul. 
 
 He worshipped as his fathers did. 
 And kept the faith of childish days. 
 
 And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
 He loved the good old ways. 
 
 The simple tastes, the kindly traits. 
 The tranquil air, and gentle speech, 
 
 The silence of the soul that waits 
 For more than man to teach. 
 
 The cant of party, school, and sect. 
 Provoked at times his honest scorn, 
 
 And Folly, in its grey respect, 
 He tossed on satire's horn. 
 
CONSCIOUS POWER. 119 
 
 But still his heart was full of awe 
 And reverence for all sacred things ; 
 
 And, brooding over form and law, 
 He saw the Spirit's wings! 
 
 In 1857 Whittier's venerable mother died, 
 aged 77. The poet's "filial attitude," says 
 Mr. Underwood, "never changed from boyhood 
 to maturity, and the tie was never loosened, 
 the simplicity, truth, and trust of the 
 early days remained to the last." But the 
 poet's sorrow was soon to be drowned in the 
 sorrows of his country. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE MASTER YEARS. 
 
 " I mourn no more my vanished years : 
 
 Beneath a tender rain, 
 An April rain of smiles and tears, 
 
 My heart is young again. 
 
 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. 
 
 I plough no more a desert land, 
 
 To harvest weed and tare ; 
 The manna dropjDing from God's hand 
 
 Rebukes my f)ainful care. 
 
 I break my pilgrim staff, — I lay 
 
 Aside the toiling oar ; 
 
 The angel sought so far away 
 
 I welcome at my door." 
 
 " Mt Psalm. " 
 
 "Establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea 
 the work of our hands establish thou it." — Psabn xc, 17. 
 
 A T the end of the fifties the old stigma was 
 
 leaving the name of Abolitionist ; politics 
 
 were disordered by the collapse of parties ; 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 121 
 
 and the shadows of coming events fell black 
 and ominous on the path of the disunited 
 
 nation. 
 
 In 1861 the civil war broke out, and the 
 Union was at stake. "The occasion," says 
 Underwood, "lifted common men into heroes. 
 The great souls whose lineaments are preserved 
 in Plutarch's Lives might have been paralleled 
 in many a shop or forge or farm-house. Life 
 and treasure were of no value, but for the 
 country's sake. The lover left his mistress, 
 the husband his wife and children. Delicately 
 nurtured men endured the fatigues, privations, 
 and squalor of camp without murmur. Wounds, 
 maiming, prisons, and hospitals were encounter- 
 ed as gaily as if they had been incidents of 
 a holiday fete." 
 
 In Whittier's war pieces we trace the 
 conflict of his feelings. So acute, indeed, 
 was his suflEering at this time, that any at- 
 tempt to analyse his emotions must seem a 
 profanation. He hated the War, he hated 
 Slavery, yet the extinction of the one 
 
122 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 seemed to depend on the continuance of the 
 other. Now he would indite a poem full 
 of expressions of trust in God, and of wist- 
 ful hopes of the end ; and now his pen 
 threw off ringing lines, whose possible effects 
 he scarcely paused to consider. Thus ''Ein 
 feste Burg ist unser Gott " had hardly 
 appeared in the New York " Independent " 
 when it was heard in every marching column. 
 Lincoln said it was " just the kind of a 
 song I want the soldiers to hear." The last 
 three verses are these. 
 
 Above the maddening cry for blood, 
 
 Above the wikl war-drumming, 
 Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good 
 The evil overcoming. 
 Give prayer and purse 
 To stay the Cui-se 
 Whose wrong we share, 
 Whose shame we bear, 
 Whose end shall gladden Heaven ! 
 
 In vain the bells of war shall ring 
 
 Of triumphs and revenges. 
 While still is spared the evil thing 
 
 That severs and estranges. 
 But blest the ear 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 123 
 
 That yet shall hear 
 The jubilant bell 
 That rings the knell 
 Of Slavery for ever ! 
 
 Then let the selfish lip be dumb, 
 
 And hushed the breath of sighing ; 
 Before the joy of peace must come 
 The pains of purifj-ing. 
 God give us grace 
 Each in his place 
 To bear his lot, 
 And, mm-muring not. 
 Endure and wait and labour ! 
 
 Whittier, it is certain, never wrote in 
 favour of the vrar with intent ; but he was 
 quite conscious of his sympathy with its 
 picturesque incidents, and admiration of its 
 multitudinous heroisms. In and above all, he 
 trusted it would free the slave. It was said 
 of him, "He was born a soldier and made 
 into a Quaker, and the soldier knocks the 
 Quaker down now and then." His own state- 
 ment of the matter is much too interesting to 
 be omitted here. 
 
 "Without intending any disparagement of 
 
124 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 my peaceable ancestry for many generations, 
 I have still strong suspicions that somewhat 
 of the old Norman blood, something of the grim 
 Berserker spirit, has been bequeathed to me. 
 How else can I account for the intense 
 childish eagerness with which I listened to 
 the stories of old campaigners who sometimes 
 fought their battles over again in my hear- 
 ing ? Why did I, in my young fancy, go up 
 with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the 
 garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with 
 the fierce son of Nun against the cities of 
 Canaan ? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's 
 Progress, my favourite character ? What gave 
 such fascination to the grand Homeric encounter 
 between Christian and Apollyon in the valley ? 
 Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle- 
 fields, exulting in the vulture-screams of the 
 blind scald over his fallen enemies ? Still 
 later, why did the newspapers furnish me 
 with subjects for hero-worship in the half- 
 demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti 
 at the head of his knavish Greeks ? I can 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 125 
 
 only account for it on the supposition that 
 the mischief was inherited, — an heirloom from 
 the old sea-kings of the ninth century. 
 
 Education and reflection have indeed 
 wrought a change in my feelings. The trumpet 
 of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not 
 now waken that old martial spirit. . . It 
 is only when a great thought incarnates itself 
 in action, desperately striving to find utter- 
 ance even in the sabre-clash and gun-fire, or 
 when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken 
 zeal and mistrustful of their own powers, put 
 on battle-harness, that I can feel any sympathy 
 with merely physical daring." 
 
 During the "War, the thirtieth annual 
 meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society met at 
 Philadelphia. Whittier, " unable to attend, sent 
 a letter, which Garrison read as from " one 
 known and honoured throughout the civilised 
 world." The letter is remarkable, as it shows 
 how thoroughly Whittier appreciated the true 
 extent of the work to be done. " For 
 while," he wrote, " we may well thank God, 
 
126 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 and congratulate one another on the prospect 
 of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of 
 the United States, we must not for a moment 
 forget that from this hour new and mighty 
 responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, 
 and educate three millions, left free indeed, 
 but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and foodless 
 in the wild chaos of civil war. We have 
 to undo the accumulated wrongs of two 
 centuries ; to re-make the manhood that slavery 
 has well nigh unmade ; to see to it that the 
 long-oppressed coloured man has a fair field 
 for development and improvement, and to 
 tread under our feet the last vestige of that 
 hateful prejudice which has been the strongest 
 external support of Southern slavery. We 
 must lift ourselves at once to the true 
 Christian altitude, where all distinctions of 
 black and white are overlooked in the heart- 
 felt recognition of the brotherhood of man." 
 
 Then follows this deeply interesting personal 
 passage. 
 
 "I must not close this letter without 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 127 
 
 confessing that I cannot be sufBciently thank- 
 ful to the Divine Providence which, in a 
 great measure through thy instrumentality, 
 turned me so early away from what Roger 
 Williams calls, ' the world's great trinity, 
 pleasure, profit, and honour " to take side 
 with the poor and oppressed. I am not in- 
 sensible to literary reputation ; I love, perhaps, 
 too well the praise and good-will of my 
 fellow men ; but I set a higher value on 
 any name as appended to the Anti-Slavery 
 Declaration of 1833 than on the title page of 
 any book." The President's Proclamation of 
 Abolition came with the New Year, and when 
 the Constitutional Amendment had ratified the 
 deed, and the bells rang out Emancipation 
 to the Slave, the poet's song broke for very 
 fulness into prayer and humiliation. 
 
 Let us kneel : 
 
 God's own voice is in that peal, 
 And this spot is holy ground. 
 
 Lord forgive us ! What are we, 
 
 Tliat our eyes this glory see, 
 That our ears have heard the sound ! 
 
128 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 For the Lord 
 
 On the whirlwind is abroad ; 
 In the earthquake He has spoken ; 
 
 He has smitten with His thunder 
 
 The iron wall asunder, 
 And the gates of brass are broken ! 
 
 Loud and long- 
 Lift the old exulting song ; 
 
 Sing with Miriam by the sea 
 He has cast the mighty down ; 
 Horse and rider sink and drown ; 
 
 " He hath triumphed gloriously ! " 
 
 Did we dare, 
 
 In our agony of prayer. 
 Ask for more than he has done ? 
 
 When was ever His right hand 
 
 Over any time or land 
 Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 
 
 We will return to 1857. In this year 
 Whittier was invited by Phillips, Sampson & 
 Co., of Boston, to assist in the organization 
 of a new first-class periodical, favourable to 
 the great reforms, to be called " The Atlantic 
 Monthly." A brilliant staflE of writers was 
 soon secured, including Emerson, Lowell, Long- 
 fellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, 
 and other writers of the highest reputation. 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 129 
 
 A liberal scale of payment to contributors 
 was adopted, and the new monthly succeeded 
 from the first. Much of Whittier's finest 
 work appeared in its columns, and quite recently 
 it contained the venerable poet's last lines, 
 written as a fraternal greeting to his old friend 
 and fellow contributor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 on the attainment of his 83rd birthday. 
 
 While Whittier's pen was always at the 
 service of the helpless and downtrodden, and 
 was as a lance in his hand to do battle with evil, 
 yet in his best years we see him gladly reverting 
 to the literary ideals of his youth. There 
 was no sacrificing of higher to lower work ; 
 the sacrifice had been all the other way ; but 
 there was an up-springing of suppressed life, 
 and a joyful release from crowds and factions 
 and city worries. It could not have been 
 surprising if the old sweet inspirations had 
 now failed, and the lyre broken when its 
 strings were struck to slower measures. 
 
 But the poet had the dew of his youth ; 
 he cherished its memories too. The old familiar 
 
130 JOHN G. WHITTIEE. 
 
 walks by the sun-kissed Merrimac, the lake 
 of Kenoza with its finny droves of pickerel, 
 the salt sea meadows of Hampton, the glisten- 
 ing levels of wet beach encircling Salisbury, 
 the hills of Newbury rising out of farm lands 
 and nestling hamlets, the legends and runes 
 of local gossip, the village folk and their 
 quaint humours ; all these had been with 
 him in 
 
 Many an after year that rolled 
 Heavily among mankind. 
 
 For Whittier was a poet to the core, and had 
 lived a strained life in cities. He had thought 
 nothing of his tastes when something higher was 
 concerned, but nevertheless he disliked public 
 life as such ; he avoided society functions ; 
 he wearied of the jangle of party strife ; he 
 abominated war. Yet he had experienced 
 all these, and now could rest and re- 
 view the painful journey. It is of him- 
 self he ^^'rites thus in " The Tent on the 
 Beach." 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 131 
 
 And one there was, a dreamer boru, 
 
 Who, with a mission to fulfil. 
 Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 
 
 The crank of an opinion-mill, 
 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 nmsic still 
 
 Of winds that out of dream-land blew. 
 The din about him could not drown 
 What the strange voices whispered down, 
 Along his task-field weird processions swept. 
 The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 
 
 The common air was thick with dreams,— 
 
 He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
 Such umsic as the woods and streams 
 
132 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Sang in his ear he sang aloud ; 
 In still, shut bays, on windy capes, 
 He heard the call of beckoning shapes, 
 And, as the grey old shadows prompted him, 
 To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends 
 grim. 
 
 In 1860, "Whittier's calm home work bore 
 fruit in a volume of " Home Ballads, Poems, 
 and Lyrics." The first lines of the first 
 poem, " The "Witch's Daughter," are in the 
 poet's new pastoral vein. 
 
 It was the pleasant harvest time. 
 When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
 And garrets bend beneath their load, 
 
 And the old swallow-haunted barns — 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
 
 And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 And the loose hay-mow's scented locks — 
 
 Are filled with summer's ripened stores, 
 Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
 From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 
 
 Whittier's art was consummate when he 
 applied it to descriptions of familiar landscape 
 and country life, and from the poems of his 
 
THK MASTER YKARS. 
 
 133 
 
 best period a collection of such gems might 
 be made Avhich for simple charm would stand 
 nearly alone. This may seem a bold propo- 
 sition, but where are we to easily match lines 
 like these from the " Prophecy of Samuel 
 Sewall." 
 
 I see, far soutbwanl, this quiet day, 
 Tlie hills of Newbuiy rolling away, 
 With the many tints of the season gay, 
 Dreamily blending in autumn mist 
 Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. 
 Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned. 
 Plum Island lies, like a whale a-ground, 
 A stone's toss over the narrow sound. 
 Inland, as far as the eye can go. 
 The hills curve round like a bended bow ; 
 A silver arrow from out them sprung, 
 I see the shine of the Quasycung ; 
 And, round and round, over valley and hill. 
 Old roads winding, as old roads will. 
 Here to a ferry, and there to a mill ; 
 And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, 
 Tlu-ough green elm arches and maple leaves, — 
 Old homesteads sacred to all that can 
 Gladden or sadden the heart of man, — 
 Over whose thresholds of oak and stone 
 Life and Death have come and gone ! 
 There pictm-ed tiles in the fireplace show, 
 
134 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Great beams sag from the ceiling low, 
 The dresser glitters with polished wares, 
 The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, 
 And the low, broad chimney shows the crack 
 By the earthquake made a century back. 
 Up from their midst springs the village spire 
 With the crest of its cock in the sun afire ; 
 Beyond are orchards and planting lands. 
 And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, 
 And, where north and south the coast-lines run, 
 The blink of the sea in breeze and sun ! 
 
 Here we have description with few em- 
 bellishments ; yet who does not feel the 
 abiding charm of lines like these ? — 
 
 And, round and round, over valley and hill, 
 Old roads winding as old roads will, 
 Here to a ferry, and there to a mill. 
 
 Or take some joyons lines from the poem 
 " Revisited," in which the poet apostrophises 
 the laughing Merrimac. 
 
 Bring us the airs of hills and forests, 
 The sweet aroma of birch and pine. 
 
 Give us a waft of the north-wind laden 
 With sweetbrier odours and breath of kine ! 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 135 
 
 Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets, 
 Shadows o£ clouds that rake the hills, 
 
 The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows, 
 The gleam and ripple of Campton rills. 
 
 Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges, 
 
 Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall ; 
 
 Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken 
 Under the shade of the mountain wall. 
 
 The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains 
 Here in thy glory and strength repeat ; 
 
 Give us a taste of thy upland uuisic. 
 Show us the dance of thy silver feet. 
 
 Such choice bits might be multiplied 
 indefinitely. Does not the hot air seem to 
 palpitate between the lines of this description 
 of a midsummer day ? 
 
 The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind. 
 Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
 Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
 With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams. 
 Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
 Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
 A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
 Creaks slowly with its driver fast asleep 
 On the load's top. Against the neighbouring hill. 
 Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, 
 The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
 
136 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
 A drowsy smell of flowers — grey heliotrope, 
 And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 
 Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
 To the pervading symphony of peace. 
 
 Wliittier could put figures into his land- 
 scapes too ; he is a master-painter of village 
 life. In the " Countess " we make acquaint- 
 ance with — 
 
 The village folk, with all their humours quaint. 
 The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, 
 Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown ; 
 The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown ; 
 The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale. 
 And the loud straggler levj-ing his black mail, — 
 Old customs, habits, sxiperstitious fears. 
 All that lies biu-ied under fifty years. 
 
 The poet, however, saw more than one 
 
 side of country life. Here is a sketch which 
 
 may be contrasted with scenes depicted in 
 
 " Snow Bound," and it is just as fine. 
 
 I look 
 Across the lapse of half-a-century, 
 And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower 
 Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds. 
 Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 137 
 
 Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 
 
 And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed 
 
 Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
 
 To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
 
 Across the curtainless windows from whose panes 
 
 Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness ; 
 
 Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed 
 
 (Broom-clean I think they called it) ; the best room 
 
 Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air 
 
 In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 
 
 Save the inevitable sampler hung 
 
 Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
 
 A green-haired woman, peonj'-cheek'd, beneath 
 
 Impossible willows ; the wide-throated hearth 
 
 Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing 
 
 The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back : 
 
 And, in sad keeping with all things about them, 
 
 Shrill, querulous women, som- and sullen men, 
 
 Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
 
 With scarce a human interest save their own 
 
 Monotonous round of small economies. 
 
 Or the poor scandal of the neighbourhood ; 
 
 Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed. 
 
 Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet ; 
 
 For them the song-spaiTow and the bobolink 
 
 Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves ; 
 
 For them in vain October's holocaust 
 
 Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, 
 
 The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
 
 Chm-ch-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 
 
 But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, 
 
138 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
 
 And winter pork with the least possible outlay 
 
 Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
 
 Showing as little actual comprehension 
 
 Of Christian charity and love and duty 
 
 As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
 
 Outdated like a last year's almanac : 
 
 Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, 
 
 And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, 
 
 The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, 
 
 The sun and air his sole inheritance. 
 
 Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, 
 
 And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 
 
 " Snow Bound," which was written in 
 1866, is the most distinctive and popular of 
 Whittier's poems. It has been quoted so 
 freely elsewhere in this book that it is need- 
 less to further illustrate its beauty. 
 
 " Skipper Ireson's Ride " was originally 
 written wholly in the vernacular, but the 
 poet adopted the extraordinary Marblehead 
 dialect for the refrain, on the suggestion of 
 a friendly critic. 
 
 Here's Flud Oirson, fm- his horrd horrt 
 Torred an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
 By the women o' Morble'ead. 
 
 " Abraham Davenport " is a fine blank 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 139 
 
 verse piece, founded on an incident of 1780. 
 " The 19th of May," says a local chronicler, 
 "was a remarkable day. Candles were lighted 
 in many houses ; the birds were silent and 
 disappeared, and the fowls retired to roost. 
 The legislature of Connecticut was then in 
 session at Hartford. A very general opinion 
 prevailed that the day of judgment was at 
 hand. The House of Representatives, being 
 unable to transact their business, adjourned. 
 A proposal to adjourn the Council was under 
 consideration. When the opinion of Colonel 
 Davenport was asked, he answered, ' I am 
 against an adjournment. The day of judg- 
 ment is either approaching or it is not. If 
 it is not, there is no cause for an adjourn- 
 ment ; if it is, I choose to be found doing 
 my duty. I wish therefore that candles may 
 be brought.' " 
 
 And there he stands in memory to this day, 
 Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
 Against the background of unnatural dark, 
 A witness to the ages as they pass 
 That simple duty hath no place for fear. 
 
140 JOHN G. WiriTTIER. 
 
 Abraham Davenport's grandfather was 
 one of the founders of New Haven, a friend 
 of the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, and 
 first suggested the establishment of the college 
 now called Yale : he was known by the 
 Indians as ' so big study man.' " 
 
 If the writer were asked to name the 
 poem in which he thinks Whittier's genius 
 excels its every other effort, he would 
 answer, <' The Grave by the Lake." Others 
 would think differently, but all must feel the 
 wondrous spell of this poem. The impossibility 
 of dealing with any large number of Whittier's 
 finer poems suggests the propriety of quot- 
 ing this piece entire, in conclusion of 
 a chapter which could not, were it twice 
 as long, do justice to Whittier's later work. 
 It is founded upon the tradition that on 
 the bank of Lake Winnepesauke, near the 
 Melvin river, were found the bones of an 
 Indian giant. 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 141 
 
 THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE. 
 
 Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles 
 Dimple round its hundred isles, 
 And the mountain's granite ledge 
 Cleaves the water like a wedge, 
 Ringed about with smooth, grey stones, 
 Rest the giant's mighty bones. 
 
 Close beside, in shade and gleam. 
 Laughs and ripples Melvin stream ; 
 ]\Ielvin water, mountain-born, 
 All fair flowers its banks adorn ; 
 All the woodlands voices meet, 
 Mingling with its murmurs sweet. 
 
 Over lowlands forest-grown, 
 Over waters, island-strown. 
 Over silver-sanded beach, 
 Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, 
 Melvin stream, and burial-heap. 
 Watch and ward the mountains keep. 
 
 Who that Titan cromlech fills ? 
 Forest kaiser, lord o' the hills ? 
 Kniglit who on the birchen tree 
 Carved his savage heraldry ? 
 Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim. 
 Prophet, sage, or wizard grim ? 
 
 Rugged type of primal man. 
 
 Grim utilitarian, 
 
 Loving woods for hunt and prowl, 
 
142 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Lake and hill for fish and fowl, 
 As the brown bear blind and dull 
 To the grand and beautiful : 
 
 Not for him the lesson drawn 
 From the mountains sniit with dawn. 
 Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of ^lay, 
 Sunset's purple bloom of day, — 
 Took his life no hue fi'om thence. 
 Poor amid such affluence ? 
 
 Haply unto hill and tree 
 All too near akin was he : 
 Unto him who stands afar 
 Nature's marvels greatest are ; 
 Who the moimtain purple seeks 
 Must not climb the higher peaks. 
 
 Yet who knows in winter tramp, 
 Or the midnight of the camp, 
 What revealings faint and far, 
 Stealing down from moon and star, 
 Kindled in that human clod 
 Thought of destiny and God ? 
 Stateliest forest patriarch, 
 Grand in robes of skin and bark, 
 What Sepulchral mysteries, 
 What weird funeral-rites, were his ? 
 What sharp wail, what drear lament, 
 Back scared wolf and eagle sent ? 
 
 Now, whate'er he may have been. 
 
 Low he lies as other men ; 
 
 On his mound the partridge drums, 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 143 
 
 There the noisy blue-jay comes ; 
 Rank nor name nor pomp has he 
 In the grave's democracy. 
 
 Part thy blue lips, northern lake ! 
 Moss-grown rocks, yoirr silence break ! 
 Tell the tale, thou ancient tree ! 
 Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee ! 
 Speak, and tell us how and when 
 Lived and died this king of men ! 
 Wordless moans the ancient pine ; 
 Lake and mountain give no sign ; 
 Vain to trace this ring of stones ; 
 Vain the search of crumbling bones: 
 Deepest of all mysteries. 
 And the saddest, silence is. 
 Nameless, noteless, clay with clay 
 Mingles slowly day by day ; 
 But somewhere, for good or ill, 
 That dark soul is living still ; 
 Somewhere yet that atom's force 
 Moves the light-poised universe. 
 Strange that on his burial-sod 
 Harebells bloom, and golden-rod. 
 "While the soul's dark horoscope 
 Holds no starry sign of hope ! 
 Is the Unseen with sight at odds 
 Nature's pity more than God's ? 
 Thus I mused by Melvin's side, 
 While the summer eventide 
 Made the woods and inland sea 
 
144 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 And the mountains mystery ; 
 And the hush of earth and air 
 Seemed the pause before a prayer, — 
 
 Prayer for him, for all who rest 
 
 Mother Earth, upon thy breast, — 
 
 Lapped on Christian turf, or hid 
 
 In rock-cave or pyramid : 
 
 All who sleep, as all who live, 
 
 Well may need the prayer, " Forgive." 
 
 Desert-smothered caravan. 
 Knee-deep dust that once was man. 
 Battle-trenches ghastly piled, 
 Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, 
 Crowded tomb and mounded sod, 
 Dumbly crave that prayer to God. 
 
 Oh the generations old 
 
 Over whom no church-bells tolled, 
 
 Christless, lifting up blind eyes 
 
 To the silence of the skies ! 
 
 For the innumerable dead 
 
 Is my souJ disquieted. 
 
 Where be now these silent hosts ? 
 Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
 Where the spectral conscripts led 
 To the white tents of the dead ? 
 What strange shore or chartless sea 
 Holds the awful mystery ? 
 
 Then the warm sky stooped to make 
 Double sunset in the lake ; 
 While above I saw with it, 
 
THE MASTER YEARS. 
 
 145 
 
 Range on range, the mountains lit ; 
 And the calm and splendour stole 
 Like an answer to my soul. 
 Hear'st thou, of little faith. 
 What to thee the mountain saith, 
 What is whispered by the trees ?— 
 "Cast on God thy care for these ; 
 Trust Him, if thy sight be dim : 
 Doubt for them is doubt of Him. 
 "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 tliat spirits wear 
 Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
 And the penitent's desire 
 Opens every gate of fire. 
 "Still Thy love, 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!" 
 
 Therefore well may Nature keep 
 Equal faith with all who sleep, 
 Set her watch of hills around 
 
 10 
 
146 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 Christian grave and heathen mound, 
 And to cairn and kirkyard send 
 Summer's flowery dividend. 
 
 Keep, pleasant Melvin stream, 
 
 Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
 
 On the Indian's grassy tomb 
 
 Swing, flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
 
 Deep below, as high above, 
 
 Sweeps the circle of God's love. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Sundown. 
 
 I have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy spirit 
 Be with me then to comfort and uphold; 
 
 No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 
 Nor street of shining gold. 
 
 Suffice it if— my good and ill unreckoned, 
 
 And both forgiven through Thy aboundmg grace- 
 
 I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
 Unto my fitting place. 
 
 Some humble door among Thy many mansions. 
 
 Some sheltering shade where sm and striving cease, 
 
 And flows for ever through heaven's green expansions, 
 The river of Thy peace. 
 
 There from the music round about me stealing, 
 I 'fain would learn the new and holy song. 
 
 And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing. 
 The life for which I long. ^, „ 
 
 " I have never desired or hoped to found a school of 
 Doetrv nor even written with the definite object of m- 
 fluendng others to follow my example: I have only written 
 as the spirit came and went, often unable to give utter- 
 ance to the best poems that were in my heart, the utter- 
 ance being holden; but it has been the crownnig Joy of a 
 firolonged old age that my life has not been entirely 
 valueK and thft I have been allowed to see the end of 
 slavery in my country." _^ ^ whittiek. (From a letter.) 
 
 w 
 
 HITTIER'S later years were spent in the 
 seclusion of his homes at Amesbury and 
 at Oak Knoll, and were cheered by the visits 
 and attentions of innumerable friends and 
 
148 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 admirers. It is not in the writer's power to 
 give a personal sketch of Whittier at first 
 hand, nor does he propose to quote any of 
 the more or less lengthy sketches which have 
 been written by some who have had per- 
 sonal relations with the poet. Whittier's ban 
 is against the inclusion of such matter, if we 
 are to take as literally meant the following 
 verses from " My Namesake," — 
 
 Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt 
 Be paid by those I love in life, 
 
 Why should the unborn critic whet 
 For me his scalping knife ? 
 
 Why should the stranger peer and pry 
 One's vacant house of life about, 
 
 And drag for curious ear and eye 
 His faults and follies out ? 
 
 Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon 
 
 With chaff of words, the garb he wore, 
 
 As corn-husks when the ear is gone 
 Are rustled all the more ? 
 
 Let kindly Silence close again^ 
 The picture vanish from the eye. 
 
 And on the dim and misty main 
 Let the small ripple die. 
 
SUNDOWN. 149 
 
 One event which brightened Whittier'B 
 last years should be mentioned here. On his 
 seventieth birthday (December 17th, 1877), at 
 the Hotel Brunswick, in Boston, a brilliant 
 band of literary men sat down to a dinner 
 given by the publishers of the " Atlantic 
 Monthly " in honour of the Quaker poet and 
 patriot. About seventy guests were present, 
 and, near the poet, there sat at the table 
 Emerson and Longfellow. Whittier made no 
 speech but contributed these lines, which were 
 read by Longfellow : 
 
 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, 
 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise, 
 
 Like him 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 unfidfiUed designs. 
 
150 JOHN G. WIIITTIER. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier died on September 
 7th of this year, 1892, aged 85 years. 
 
 Those who have read even this slight 
 sketch through, will need no summary of the 
 characteristic qualities which endeared Whittier 
 to his countrymen, to his near friends, and 
 to his fellow members of the Society of 
 Friends on both sides of the Atlantic. They 
 are enshrined in his poetry whose simple 
 melodies will haunt the ears of men in years 
 to come, and when these have grown faint 
 and far, the good he did will have passed 
 into the constitution of our world, adding its 
 energy to the broadening stream that makes 
 for righteousness in men and nations. 
 
 For himself, let the poet's own words of 
 retrospect suffice. — 
 
 Poor and inadequate the shadow-play 
 
 Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream, 
 
 Against life's solemn background needs must seem 
 At this late liour. Yet, not unthankfully, 
 I call to mind the fountains by the way, 
 The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray, 
 Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving 
 
151 
 
 And of receiving, the great boon of living 
 
 In grand historic years when Liberty 
 Had need of word and work, quick sympathies 
 For all who fail and sufEer, song's relief, 
 Nature's uncloying loveliness ; 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 
 Tlu-ough lapse and failure look to the intent. 
 And judge oiu" frailty by the life we meant. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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