JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

(‡ decoration)JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.“THE POET OF FREEDOM.”IN a solitary farm house near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the valley of the Merrimac, on the17thday of December, 1807, John Greenleaf Whittier was born. Within the same town, and Amesbury, nearby, this kind and gentle man, whom all the world delights to honor for his simple and beautiful heart-songs, spent most of his life, dying at the ripe old age of nearly eighty-five, in Danvers, Massachusetts, September7th, 1892. The only distinguishing features about his ancestors were thatThos.Whittier settled at Haverhill in 1647, and brought with him from Newberry the first hive of bees in the settlement, that they were all sturdy Quakers, lived simply, were friendly and freedom loving. The early surroundings of the farmer boy were simple and frugal. He has pictured them for us in his masterpiece, “Snowbound.” Poverty, the necessity of laboring upon the farm, the influence of Quaker traditions, his busy life, all conspired against his liberal education and literary culture. This limitation of knowledge is, however, at once to the masses his charm, and, to scholars, his one defect. It has led him to write, as no other poet could, upon the dear simplicity of New England farm life. He has written from the heart and not from the head; he has composed popular pastorals, not hymns of culture. Only such training as the district schools afforded, with a couple of years at Haverhill Academy comprised his advantages in education.In referring to thisalma materin after years, under the spell of his muse, the poet thus writes:—“Still sits the school house by the road,A ragged beggar sunning;Around it still the sumachs growAnd black-berry vines are running.Within, the master’s desk is seen,Deep-scarred by raps official;The warping floor, the battered seats,The jack-knife carved initial.”It was natural for Whittier to become the poet of that combination of which Garrison was the apostle, and Phillips and Sumner the orators. His early poems were published by Garrison in his paper, “The Free Press,” the first one when Whittierwas nineteen years of age and Garrison himself little more than a boy. The farmer lad was elated when he found the verses which he had so timidly submitted in print with a friendly comment from the editor and a request for more. Garrison even visited Whittier’s parents and urged the importance of giving him a finished education. Thus he fell early under the spell of the great abolitionist and threw himself with all the ardor of his nature into the movement. His poems against slavery and disunion have a ringing zeal worthy of a Cromwell. “They are,” declares one writer, “like the sound of the trumpets blown before the walls of Jericho.”As a Quaker Whittier could not have been otherwise than an abolitionist, for that denomination had long since abolished slavery within its own communion. Most prominent among his poems of freedom are “The Voice of Freedom,” published in 1849, “The Panorama and Other Poems,” in 1856, “In War Times,” in 1863, and “Ichabod,” a pathetically kind yet severely stinging rebuke to Daniel Webster for his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was right from the standpoint of law and the Constitution, but Whittier argued from the standpoint of human right and liberty. “Barbara Frietchie,”—while it is pronounced purely a fiction, as is also his poem about John Brown kissing the Negro baby on his way to the gallows,—is perhaps the most widely quoted of his famous war poems.Whittier also wrote extensively on subjects relating to New England history, witchcraft and colonial traditions. This group includes many of his best ballads, which have done in verse for colonial romance what Hawthorne did in prose in his “Twice-Told Tales” and “Scarlet Letter.” It is these poems that have entitled Whittier to be called “the greatest of American ballad writers.” Among them are to be found “Mabel Martin,” “The Witch of Wenham,” “Marguerite” and “Skipper Ireson’s Ride.” But it is perhaps in the third department of his writings, namely, rural tales and idyls, that the poet is most widely known. These pastoral poems contain the very heart and soul of New England. They are faithful and loving pictures of humble life, simple and peaceful in their subject and in their style. The masterpieces of this class are “Snowbound,” “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Among the Hills,” “Telling the Bees,”etc.The relation of these simple experiences of homely character has carried him to the hearts of the people and made him, next to Longfellow, the most popular of American poets. There is a pleasure and a satisfaction in the freshness of Whittier’s homely words and homespun phrases, which we seek in vain in the polished art of cultivated masters. As a poet of nature he has painted the landscapes of New England as Bryant has the larger features of the continent.Whittier was never married and aside from a few exquisite verses he has given the public no clew to the romance of his youth. His home was presided over for many years by his sister Elizabeth, a most lovely and talented woman, for whom he cherished the deepest affection, and he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her memory in “Snowbound.” The poet was shy and diffident among strangers and in formal society, but among his friends genial and delightful, with a fund of gentle and delicate humor which gave his conversation a great charm.Aside from his work as a poet Whittier wrote considerable prose. His first volume was “Legends of New England,” published in 1831, consisting of prose and verse. Subsequent prose publications consisted of contributions to the slave controversy,biographical sketches of English and American reformers, studies of scenery and folk-lore of the Merrimac valley. Those of greatest literary interest were the “Supernaturalisms of New England,” (1847,) and “Literary Recreations and Miscellanies,” (1852.)In 1836 Whittier became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and he was all his life interested in public affairs, and wrote much for newspapers and periodicals. In 1838 he began to edit the “Pennsylvania Freeman” in Philadelphia, but in the following year his press was destroyed and his office burned by a pro-slavery mob, and he returned to New England, devoting the larger part of his life, aside from his anti-slavery political writings, to embalming its history and legends in his literature, and so completely has it been done by him it has been declared: “If every other record of the early history and life of New England were lost the story could be constructed again from the pages of Whittier. Traits, habits, facts, traditions, incidents—he holds a torch to the dark places and illumines them every one.”Mr.Whittier, perhaps, is the most peculiarly American poet of any that our country has produced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant belong as much to one land as another; and all the rest of our singers—Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren—with the single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born in the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron as their own. But Whittier is entirely a poet of his own soil. All through his verse we see the elements that created it, and it is interesting to trace his simple life, throughout, in his verses from the time, when like that urchin with whom he asserts brotherhood, and who has won all affections, he ate his* * * “milk and bread,Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,On the door-stone gray and rude.O’er me, like a regal tent,Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,Purple curtains fringed with goldLooped in many a wind-swung fold;”and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of Chalkley—as“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shoreHis simple record I have pondered o’erWith deep and quiet joy.”In these reveries, “The Barefoot Boy” and others, thousands of his countrymen have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote, to the New Englander has a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To them his writings are familiar photographs, but they are also treasury houses of facts over which the future antiquarian will pour and gather all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give.The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge ofMrs.Pickard, a♦niece of the poet. She has recently made certain changes in the house; but this has been done so wisely and cautiously that if the place some day becomes a shrine—as it doubtless will—the restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The library is left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died.♦‘neice’ replaced with ‘niece’MY PLAYMATE.THE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill,Their song was soft and low;The blossoms in the sweet May windWere falling like the snow.The blossoms drifted at our feet,The orchard birds sang clear;The sweetest and the saddest dayIt seemed of all the year,For more to me than birds or flowers,My playmate left her home,And took with her the laughing spring,The music and the bloom.She kissed the lips of kith and kin,She laid her hand in mine:What more could ask the bashful boyWho fed her father’s kine?She left us in the bloom of May:The constant years told o’erThe seasons with as sweet May morns,But she came back no more.I walk with noiseless feet the roundOf uneventful years;Still o’er and o’er I sow the SpringAnd reap the Autumn ears.She lives where all the golden yearHer summer roses blow;The dusky children of the sunBefore her come and go.There haply with her jeweled handsShe smooths her silken gown,—No more the homespun lap whereinI shook the walnuts down.The wild grapes wait us by the brook,The brown nuts on the hill,And still the May-day flowers make sweetThe woods of Follymill.The lilies blossom in the pond,The birds build in the tree,The dark pines sing on Ramoth HillThe slow song of the sea.I wonder if she thinks of them,And how the old time seems,—If ever the pines of Ramoth woodAre sounding in her dreams.I see her face, I hear her voice;Does she remember mine?And what to her is now the boyWho fed her father’s kine?What cares she that the orioles buildFor other eyes than ours,—That other hands with nuts are filled,And other laps with flowers?O playmate in the golden time!Our mossy seat is green,Its fringing violets blossom yet,The old trees o’er it lean.The winds so sweet with birch and fernA sweeter memory blow;And there in spring the veeries singThe song of long ago.And still the pines of Ramoth woodAre moaning like the sea,—The moaning of the sea of changeBetween myself and thee!THE CHANGELING.FOR the fairest maid in HamptonThey needed not to search,Who saw young Anna FavorCome walking into church,—Or bringing from the meadows,At set of harvest-day,The frolic of the blackbirds,The sweetness of the hay.Now the weariest of all mothers,The saddest two-years bride,She scowls in the face of her husband,And spurns her child aside.“Rake out the red coals, goodman,For there the child shall lie,Till the black witch comes to fetch her,And both up chimney fly.“It’s never my own little daughter,It’s never my own,” she said;“The witches have stolen my Anna,And left me an imp instead.“O, fair and sweet was my baby,Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold;But this is ugly and wrinkled,Cross, and cunning, and old.“I hate the touch of her fingers,I hate the feel of her skin;It’s not the milk from my bosom,But my blood, that she sucks in.“My face grows sharp with the torment;Look! my arms are skin and bone!—Rake open the red coals, goodman,And the witch shall have her own.“She’ll come when she hears it crying,In the shape of an owl or bat,And she’ll bring us our darling AnnaIn place of her screeching brat.”Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,Laid his hand upon her head:“Thy sorrow is great, O woman!I sorrow with thee,” he said.“The paths to trouble are many,And never but one sure wayLeads out to the light beyond it:My poor wife, let us pray.”Then he said to the great All-Father,“Thy daughter is weak and blind;Let her sight come back, and clothe herOnce more in her right mind.“Lead her out of this evil shadow,Out of these fancies wild;Let the holy love of the mother,Turn again to her child.“Make her lips like the lips of Mary,Kissing her blessed Son;Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,Rest on her little one.“Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,Open her prison door,And thine shall be all the gloryAnd praise forevermore.”Then into the face of its mother,The baby looked up and smiled;And the cloud of her soul was lifted,And she knew her little child.A beam of slant west sunshineMade the wan face almost fair,Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonderAnd the rings of pale gold hair.She kissed it on lip and forehead,She kissed it on cheek and chin;And she bared her snow-white bosomTo the lips so pale and thin.O, fair on her bridal morningWas the maid who blushed and smiledBut fairer to Ezra DaltonLooked the mother of his child.With more than a lover’s fondnessHe stooped to her worn young faceAnd the nursing child and the motherHe folded in one embrace.“Now mount and ride, my goodmanAs lovest thine own soul!Woe’s me if my wicked fanciesBe the death of Goody Cole!”His horse he saddled and bridled,And into the night rode he,—Now through the great black woodland;Now by the white-beached sea.He rode through the silent clearings,He came to the ferry wide,And thrice he called to the boatmanAsleep on the other side.He set his horse to the river,He swam to Newburg town,And he called up Justice SewallIn his nightcap and his gown.And the grave and worshipful justice,Upon whose soul be peace!Set his name to the jailer’s warrantFor Goody Cole’s release.Then through the night the hoof-beatsWent sounding like a flail:And Goody Cole at cock crowCame forth from Ipswich jail.THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.THE ocean looketh up to heaven,As ’twere a living thing;The homage of its waves is givenIn ceaseless worshiping.They kneel upon the sloping sand,As bends the human knee,A beautiful and tireless band,The priesthood of the sea!They pour the glittering treasures outWhich in the deep have birth,And chant their awful hymns aboutThe watching hills of earth.The green earth sends its incense upFrom every mountain-shrine,From every flower and dewy cupThat greeteth the sunshine.The mists are lifted from the rills,Like the white wing of prayer;They lean above the ancient hills,As doing homage there.The forest-tops are lowly castO’er breezy hill and glen,As if a prayerful spirit pass’dOn nature as on men.The clouds weep o’er the fallen world,E’en as repentant love;Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d,They fade in light above.The sky is as a temple’s arch,The blue and wavy airIs glorious with the spirit-marchOf messengers at prayer.The gentle moon, the kindling sun,The many stars are given,As shrines to burn earth’s incense onThe altar-fires of Heaven!THE BAREFOOT BOY.BLESSINGS on thee, little man,Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!With thy turned up pantaloons,And thy merry whistled tunes;With thy red lip, redder stillKissed by strawberries on the hill;With the sunshine on thy face,Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace!From my heart I give thee joy;I was once a barefoot boy.Prince thou art—the grown-up man,Only is republican.Let the million-dollared ride!Barefoot, trudging at his side,Thou hast more than he can buy,In the reach of ear and eye:Outward sunshine, inward joy,Blessings on the barefoot boy.O! for boyhood’s painless play,Sleep that wakes in laughing day,Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,Knowledge never learned of schools:Of the wild bee’s morning chase,Of the wild flower’s time and place,Flight of fowl, and habitudeOf the tenants of the wood;How the tortoise bears his shell,How the woodchuck digs his cell,And the ground-mole sinks his well;How the robin feeds her young,How the oriole’s nest is hung;Where the whitest lilies blow,Where the freshest berries grow,Where the ground-nut trails its vine,Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;Of the black wasp’s cunning way,Mason of his walls of clay,And the architectural plansOf gray hornet artisans!For, eschewing books and tasks,Nature answers all he asks;Hand in hand with her he walks,Part and parcel of her joy,Blessings on the barefoot boy.O for boyhood’s time of June,Crowding years in one brief moon,When all things I heard or saw,Me, their master, waited for!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 conePurpled 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!Still, as my horizon grew,Larger grew my riches too,All the world I saw or knewSeemed a complex Chinese toy,Fashioned for a barefoot boy!O, for festal dainties spread,Like my bowl of milk and bread,Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,On the door-stone, gray 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 playOf the pied frogs’ orchestra;And, to light the noisy choir,Lit the fly his lamp of fire.I was monarch; pomp and joyWaited on the barefoot boy!Cheerily, then, my little man!Live and laugh as boyhood can;Though the flinty slopes be hard,Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,Every morn shall lead thee throughFresh baptisms of the dew;Every evening from thy feetShall the cool wind kiss the heat;All too soon these feet must hideIn the prison cells of pride,Lose the freedom of the sod,Like a colt’s for work be shod,Made to tread the mills of toil,Up and down in ceaseless moil,Happy if their track be foundNever on forbidden ground;Happy if they sink not inQuick and treacherous sands of sin.Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,Ere it passes, barefoot boy!MAUD MULLER.MAUD MULLER, on a summer’s day,Raked the meadow sweet with hay.Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealthOf simple beauty and rustic health.Singing, she wrought, and her merry gleeThe mock-bird echoed from his tree.But, when she glanced to the far off town,White from its hill-slope looking down,The sweet song died, and a vague unrestAnd a nameless longing filled her breast—A wish, that she hardly dared to own,For something better than she had known.The Judge rode slowly down the lane,Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.He drew his bridle in the shadeOf the apple-trees, to greet the maid.And ask a draught from the spring that flowedThrough the meadow across the road.She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,And filled for him her small tin cup,And blushed as she gave it, looking downOn her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.“Thanks!” said the Judge, “a sweeter draughtFrom a fairer hand was never quaffed.”He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,Of the singing birds and the humming bees;Then talked of the haying, and wondered whetherThe cloud in the west would bring foul weather.And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,And her graceful ankles bare and brown;And listened, while a pleased surpriseLooked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.At last, like one who for delaySeeks a vain excuse, he rode away.Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!That I the Judge’s bride might be!“He would dress me up in silks so fine,And praise and toast me at his wine.“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;My brother should sail a painted boat.“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,And the baby should have a new toy each day.“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,And all should bless me who left our door.”The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,And saw Maud Muller standing still.“A form more fair, a face more sweet,Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.“And her modest answer and graceful airShow her wise and good as she is fair.“Would she were mine, and I to-day,Like her, a harvester of hay:“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,“But low of cattle, and song of birds,And health, and quiet, and loving words.”But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,And Maud was left in the field alone.But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,When he hummed in court an old love-tune;And the young girl mused beside the well,Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.He wedded a wife of richest dower,Who lived for fashion, as he for power.Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,He watched a picture come and go;And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyesLooked out in their innocent surprise.Oft when the wine in his glass was red,He longed for the wayside well instead;And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,“Ah, that I were free again!“Free as when I rode that day,Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”She wedded a man unlearned and poor,And many children played round her door.But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,Left their traces on heart and brain.And oft, when the summer sun shone hotOn the new mown hay in the meadow lot,And she heard the little spring brook fallOver the roadside, through the wall,In the shade of the apple-tree againShe saw a rider draw his rein,And gazing down with timid grace,She felt his pleased eyes read her face.Sometimes her narrow kitchen wallsStretched away into stately halls;The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,The tallow candle an astral burned;And for him who sat by the chimney lug,Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,A manly form at her side she saw,And joy was duty and love was law.Then she took up her burden of life again,Saying only, “It might have been.”Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,For rich repiner and household drudge!God pity them both! and pity us all,Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;For of all sad words of tongue or pen,The saddest are these: “It might have been!”Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope liesDeeply buried from human eyes;And, in the hereafter, angels mayRoll the stone from its grave away!MEMORIES.ABEAUTIFUL and happy girlWith step as soft as summer air,And fresh young lip and brow of pearlShadow’d by many a careless curlOf unconfined and flowing hair:A seeming child in every thingSave thoughtful brow, and ripening charms,As nature wears the smile of springWhen sinking into summer’s arms.A mind rejoicing in the lightWhich melted through its graceful bower,Leaf after leaf serenely brightAnd stainless in its holy whiteUnfolding like a morning flower:A heart, which, like a fine-toned luteWith 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 chainOf 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 lean’d to hear thee speak,Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.I hear again thy low replies,I feel thy arm within my own,And timidly again upriseThe fringed lids of hazel eyesWith 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 smiledMy picture of thy youth to see,When half a woman, half a child,Thy very artlessness beguiled,And folly’s self seem’d wise in thee.I too can smile, when o’er that hourThe lights of memory backward stream,Yet feel the while that manhood’s powerIs vainer than my boyhood’s dream.Years have pass’d on, and left their traceOf graver care and deeper thought;And unto me the calm, cold faceOf manhood, and to thee the graceOf woman’s pensive beauty brought,On life’s rough blasts for blame or praiseThe schoolboy’s name has widely flown;Thine in the green and quiet waysOf unobtrusive goodness known.And wider yet in thought and deedOur still diverging thoughts incline,Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed,While answers to my spirit’s needThe Yorkshire peasant’s simple line.For thee the priestly rite and prayer,And holy day and solemn psalm,For me the silent reverence whereMy brethren gather, slow and calm.Yet hath thy spirit left on meAn impress time has not worn out,And something of myself in thee,A shadow from the past, I seeLingering even yet thy way about;Not wholly can the heart unlearnThat lesson of its better hours,Not yet has Time’s dull footstep wornTo common dust that path of flowers.Thus, while at times before our eyeThe clouds about the present part,And, smiling through them, round us lieSoft hues of memory’s morning sky—The Indian summer of the heart,In secret sympathies of mind,In founts of feeling which retainTheir pure, fresh flow, we yet may findOur early dreams not wholly vain!THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.LOOK on him—through his dungeon-grate,Feebly and cold, the morning lightComes stealing round him, dim and late,As if it loathed the sight.Reclining on his strawy bed,His hand upholds his drooping head—His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard,Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;And o’er his bony fingers flowHis long, dishevell’d locks of snow.No grateful fire before him glows,—And yet the winter’s breath is chill:And o’er his half-clad person goesThe frequent ague-thrill!Silent—save ever and anon,A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,Forces apart the painful gripOf the old sufferer’s bearded lip:O, sad and crushing is the fateOf old age chain’d and desolate!JustGod! why lies that old man there?A murderer shares his prison-bed,Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,Gleam on him fierce and red;And the rude oath and heartless jeerFall ever on his loathing ear,And, or in wakefulness or sleepNerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,Crimson’d with murder, touches him!What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done?Has murder stain’d his hands with gore?Not so: his crime’s a fouler one:God made the old man poor!For this he shares a felon’s cell—The fittest earthly type of hell!For this—the boon for which he pour’dHis young blood on the invader’s sword,And counted light the fearful cost—His blood-gain’d liberty is lost!And so, for such a place of rest,Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rainOn Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,And Saratoga’s plain?Look forth, thou man of many scars,Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars!It must be joy, in sooth, to seeYon monument uprear’d to thee—Piled granite and a prison cell—The land repays thy service well!Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,And fling the starry banner out;Shout “Freedom!” till your lisping onesGive back their cradle-shout:Let boasted eloquence declaimOf honor, liberty, and fame;Still let the poet’s strain be heard,With “glory” for each second word,And everything with breath agreeTo praise, “our glorious liberty!”And when the patriot cannon jarsThat prison’s cold and gloomy wall,And through its grates the stripes and starsRise on the wind, and fall—Think ye that prisoner’s aged earRejoices in the general cheer!Think ye his dim and failing eyeIs kindled at your pageantry?Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb,What is your carnival to him?Down with the law that binds him thus!Unworthy freemen, let it findNo refuge from the withering curseOfGodand human kind!Open the prisoner’s living tomb,And usher from its brooding gloomThe victims of your savage code,To the free sun and air ofGod!No longer dare as crime to brand,The chastening of the Almighty’s hand!THE STORM.FROM “SNOW-BOUND.”Snow-bound is regarded as Whittier’s master-piece, as a descriptive and reminiscent poem. It is a New England Fireside Idyl, which in its faithfulness recalls, “The Winter Evening,” of Cowper, and Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night”; but in sweetness and animation, it is superior to either of these. Snow-bound is a faithful description of a winter scene, familiar in the country surrounding Whittier’s home in Connecticut. The complete poem is published in illustrated form byMessrs.Houghton, Mifflin &Co., by whose♦permission this extract is here inserted.♦‘permisssion’ replaced with ‘permission’UNWARNED by any sunset lightThe gray day darkened into night,A night made hoary with the swarmAnd whirl-dance of the blinding storm,As zigzag wavering to and froCrossed and recrossed the winged snow;And ere the early bedtime cameThe white drift piled the window-frame,And through the glass the clothes-line postsLooked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.So all night long the storm roared on:The morning broke without a sun;In tiny spherule traced with linesOf Nature’s geometric signs,In starry flake, and pellicle,All day the hoary meteor fell;And, when the second morning shone,We looked upon a world unknown,On nothing we could call our own.Around the glistening wonder bentThe blue walls of the firmament,No cloud above, no earth below,—A universe of sky and snow!The old familiar sight of oursTook marvelous shapes; strange domes and towersRose up where sty or corn-crib stood,Or garden wall, or belt of wood;A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,A fenceless drift what once was road;The bridle-post an old man satWith loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;The well-curb had a Chinese roof;And even the long sweep, high aloof,In its slant splendor, seemed to tellOf Pisa’s leaning miracle.A prompt, decisive man, no breathOur father wasted: “Boys, a path!”Well pleased, (for when did farmer boyCount such a summons less than joy?)Our buskins on our feet we drew;With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,To guard our necks and ears from snow,We cut the solid whiteness through,And, where the drift was deepest, madeA tunnel walled and overlaidWith dazzling crystal: we had readOf rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,And to our own his name we gave,With many a wish the luck were oursTo test his lamp’s supernal powers.ICHABOD.The following poem was written on hearing of Daniel Webster’s course in supporting the “Compromise Measure,” including the “Fugitive Slave Law”. This speech was delivered in the United States Senate on the7thof March, 1850, and greatly incensed the Abolitionists.Mr.Whittier, in common with many New Englanders, regarded it as the certain downfall ofMr.Webster. The lines are full of tender regret, deep grief and touching pathos.SO fallen! so lost! the light withdrawnWhich once he wore!The glory from his gray hairs goneFor evermore!Revile him not,—the Tempter hathA snare for all!And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,Befit his fall.Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage,When he who mightHave lighted up and led his ageFalls back in night.Scorn! would the angels laugh to markA bright soul driven,Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,From hope and heaven?Let not the land, once proud of him,Insult him now,Nor brand with deeper shame his dimDishonor’d brow.But let its humbled sons, instead,From sea to lake,A long lament, as for the dead,In sadness make.Of all we loved and honor’d, noughtSave power remains,—A fallen angel’s pride of thoughtStill strong in chains.All else is gone; from those great eyesThe soul has fled:When faith is lost, when honor dies,The man is dead!Then pay the reverence of old daysTo his dead fame;Walk backward with averted gaze,And hide the shame!Souvenir of Whittier

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“THE POET OF FREEDOM.”

IN a solitary farm house near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the valley of the Merrimac, on the17thday of December, 1807, John Greenleaf Whittier was born. Within the same town, and Amesbury, nearby, this kind and gentle man, whom all the world delights to honor for his simple and beautiful heart-songs, spent most of his life, dying at the ripe old age of nearly eighty-five, in Danvers, Massachusetts, September7th, 1892. The only distinguishing features about his ancestors were thatThos.Whittier settled at Haverhill in 1647, and brought with him from Newberry the first hive of bees in the settlement, that they were all sturdy Quakers, lived simply, were friendly and freedom loving. The early surroundings of the farmer boy were simple and frugal. He has pictured them for us in his masterpiece, “Snowbound.” Poverty, the necessity of laboring upon the farm, the influence of Quaker traditions, his busy life, all conspired against his liberal education and literary culture. This limitation of knowledge is, however, at once to the masses his charm, and, to scholars, his one defect. It has led him to write, as no other poet could, upon the dear simplicity of New England farm life. He has written from the heart and not from the head; he has composed popular pastorals, not hymns of culture. Only such training as the district schools afforded, with a couple of years at Haverhill Academy comprised his advantages in education.

In referring to thisalma materin after years, under the spell of his muse, the poet thus writes:—

“Still sits the school house by the road,A ragged beggar sunning;Around it still the sumachs growAnd black-berry vines are running.Within, the master’s desk is seen,Deep-scarred by raps official;The warping floor, the battered seats,The jack-knife carved initial.”

“Still sits the school house by the road,

A ragged beggar sunning;

Around it still the sumachs grow

And black-berry vines are running.

Within, the master’s desk is seen,

Deep-scarred by raps official;

The warping floor, the battered seats,

The jack-knife carved initial.”

It was natural for Whittier to become the poet of that combination of which Garrison was the apostle, and Phillips and Sumner the orators. His early poems were published by Garrison in his paper, “The Free Press,” the first one when Whittierwas nineteen years of age and Garrison himself little more than a boy. The farmer lad was elated when he found the verses which he had so timidly submitted in print with a friendly comment from the editor and a request for more. Garrison even visited Whittier’s parents and urged the importance of giving him a finished education. Thus he fell early under the spell of the great abolitionist and threw himself with all the ardor of his nature into the movement. His poems against slavery and disunion have a ringing zeal worthy of a Cromwell. “They are,” declares one writer, “like the sound of the trumpets blown before the walls of Jericho.”

As a Quaker Whittier could not have been otherwise than an abolitionist, for that denomination had long since abolished slavery within its own communion. Most prominent among his poems of freedom are “The Voice of Freedom,” published in 1849, “The Panorama and Other Poems,” in 1856, “In War Times,” in 1863, and “Ichabod,” a pathetically kind yet severely stinging rebuke to Daniel Webster for his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was right from the standpoint of law and the Constitution, but Whittier argued from the standpoint of human right and liberty. “Barbara Frietchie,”—while it is pronounced purely a fiction, as is also his poem about John Brown kissing the Negro baby on his way to the gallows,—is perhaps the most widely quoted of his famous war poems.

Whittier also wrote extensively on subjects relating to New England history, witchcraft and colonial traditions. This group includes many of his best ballads, which have done in verse for colonial romance what Hawthorne did in prose in his “Twice-Told Tales” and “Scarlet Letter.” It is these poems that have entitled Whittier to be called “the greatest of American ballad writers.” Among them are to be found “Mabel Martin,” “The Witch of Wenham,” “Marguerite” and “Skipper Ireson’s Ride.” But it is perhaps in the third department of his writings, namely, rural tales and idyls, that the poet is most widely known. These pastoral poems contain the very heart and soul of New England. They are faithful and loving pictures of humble life, simple and peaceful in their subject and in their style. The masterpieces of this class are “Snowbound,” “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Among the Hills,” “Telling the Bees,”etc.The relation of these simple experiences of homely character has carried him to the hearts of the people and made him, next to Longfellow, the most popular of American poets. There is a pleasure and a satisfaction in the freshness of Whittier’s homely words and homespun phrases, which we seek in vain in the polished art of cultivated masters. As a poet of nature he has painted the landscapes of New England as Bryant has the larger features of the continent.

Whittier was never married and aside from a few exquisite verses he has given the public no clew to the romance of his youth. His home was presided over for many years by his sister Elizabeth, a most lovely and talented woman, for whom he cherished the deepest affection, and he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her memory in “Snowbound.” The poet was shy and diffident among strangers and in formal society, but among his friends genial and delightful, with a fund of gentle and delicate humor which gave his conversation a great charm.

Aside from his work as a poet Whittier wrote considerable prose. His first volume was “Legends of New England,” published in 1831, consisting of prose and verse. Subsequent prose publications consisted of contributions to the slave controversy,biographical sketches of English and American reformers, studies of scenery and folk-lore of the Merrimac valley. Those of greatest literary interest were the “Supernaturalisms of New England,” (1847,) and “Literary Recreations and Miscellanies,” (1852.)

In 1836 Whittier became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and he was all his life interested in public affairs, and wrote much for newspapers and periodicals. In 1838 he began to edit the “Pennsylvania Freeman” in Philadelphia, but in the following year his press was destroyed and his office burned by a pro-slavery mob, and he returned to New England, devoting the larger part of his life, aside from his anti-slavery political writings, to embalming its history and legends in his literature, and so completely has it been done by him it has been declared: “If every other record of the early history and life of New England were lost the story could be constructed again from the pages of Whittier. Traits, habits, facts, traditions, incidents—he holds a torch to the dark places and illumines them every one.”

Mr.Whittier, perhaps, is the most peculiarly American poet of any that our country has produced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant belong as much to one land as another; and all the rest of our singers—Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren—with the single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born in the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron as their own. But Whittier is entirely a poet of his own soil. All through his verse we see the elements that created it, and it is interesting to trace his simple life, throughout, in his verses from the time, when like that urchin with whom he asserts brotherhood, and who has won all affections, he ate his

* * * “milk and bread,Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,On the door-stone gray and rude.O’er me, like a regal tent,Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,Purple curtains fringed with goldLooped in many a wind-swung fold;”

* * * “milk and bread,

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone gray and rude.

O’er me, like a regal tent,

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,

Purple curtains fringed with gold

Looped in many a wind-swung fold;”

and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of Chalkley—as

“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shoreHis simple record I have pondered o’erWith deep and quiet joy.”

“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shore

His simple record I have pondered o’er

With deep and quiet joy.”

In these reveries, “The Barefoot Boy” and others, thousands of his countrymen have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote, to the New Englander has a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To them his writings are familiar photographs, but they are also treasury houses of facts over which the future antiquarian will pour and gather all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give.

The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge ofMrs.Pickard, a♦niece of the poet. She has recently made certain changes in the house; but this has been done so wisely and cautiously that if the place some day becomes a shrine—as it doubtless will—the restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The library is left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died.

♦‘neice’ replaced with ‘niece’

MY PLAYMATE.

THE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill,Their song was soft and low;The blossoms in the sweet May windWere falling like the snow.The blossoms drifted at our feet,The orchard birds sang clear;The sweetest and the saddest dayIt seemed of all the year,For more to me than birds or flowers,My playmate left her home,And took with her the laughing spring,The music and the bloom.She kissed the lips of kith and kin,She laid her hand in mine:What more could ask the bashful boyWho fed her father’s kine?She left us in the bloom of May:The constant years told o’erThe seasons with as sweet May morns,But she came back no more.I walk with noiseless feet the roundOf uneventful years;Still o’er and o’er I sow the SpringAnd reap the Autumn ears.She lives where all the golden yearHer summer roses blow;The dusky children of the sunBefore her come and go.There haply with her jeweled handsShe smooths her silken gown,—No more the homespun lap whereinI shook the walnuts down.The wild grapes wait us by the brook,The brown nuts on the hill,And still the May-day flowers make sweetThe woods of Follymill.The lilies blossom in the pond,The birds build in the tree,The dark pines sing on Ramoth HillThe slow song of the sea.I wonder if she thinks of them,And how the old time seems,—If ever the pines of Ramoth woodAre sounding in her dreams.I see her face, I hear her voice;Does she remember mine?And what to her is now the boyWho fed her father’s kine?What cares she that the orioles buildFor other eyes than ours,—That other hands with nuts are filled,And other laps with flowers?O playmate in the golden time!Our mossy seat is green,Its fringing violets blossom yet,The old trees o’er it lean.The winds so sweet with birch and fernA sweeter memory blow;And there in spring the veeries singThe song of long ago.And still the pines of Ramoth woodAre moaning like the sea,—The moaning of the sea of changeBetween myself and thee!

HE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill,

Their song was soft and low;

The blossoms in the sweet May wind

Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,

The orchard birds sang clear;

The sweetest and the saddest day

It seemed of all the year,

For more to me than birds or flowers,

My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring,

The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,

She laid her hand in mine:

What more could ask the bashful boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:

The constant years told o’er

The seasons with as sweet May morns,

But she came back no more.

I walk with noiseless feet the round

Of uneventful years;

Still o’er and o’er I sow the Spring

And reap the Autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year

Her summer roses blow;

The dusky children of the sun

Before her come and go.

There haply with her jeweled hands

She smooths her silken gown,—

No more the homespun lap wherein

I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,

The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet

The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The birds build in the tree,

The dark pines sing on Ramoth Hill

The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,

And how the old time seems,—

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood

Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice;

Does she remember mine?

And what to her is now the boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

What cares she that the orioles build

For other eyes than ours,—

That other hands with nuts are filled,

And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!

Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet,

The old trees o’er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing

The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood

Are moaning like the sea,—

The moaning of the sea of change

Between myself and thee!

THE CHANGELING.

FOR the fairest maid in HamptonThey needed not to search,Who saw young Anna FavorCome walking into church,—Or bringing from the meadows,At set of harvest-day,The frolic of the blackbirds,The sweetness of the hay.Now the weariest of all mothers,The saddest two-years bride,She scowls in the face of her husband,And spurns her child aside.“Rake out the red coals, goodman,For there the child shall lie,Till the black witch comes to fetch her,And both up chimney fly.“It’s never my own little daughter,It’s never my own,” she said;“The witches have stolen my Anna,And left me an imp instead.“O, fair and sweet was my baby,Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold;But this is ugly and wrinkled,Cross, and cunning, and old.“I hate the touch of her fingers,I hate the feel of her skin;It’s not the milk from my bosom,But my blood, that she sucks in.“My face grows sharp with the torment;Look! my arms are skin and bone!—Rake open the red coals, goodman,And the witch shall have her own.“She’ll come when she hears it crying,In the shape of an owl or bat,And she’ll bring us our darling AnnaIn place of her screeching brat.”Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,Laid his hand upon her head:“Thy sorrow is great, O woman!I sorrow with thee,” he said.“The paths to trouble are many,And never but one sure wayLeads out to the light beyond it:My poor wife, let us pray.”Then he said to the great All-Father,“Thy daughter is weak and blind;Let her sight come back, and clothe herOnce more in her right mind.“Lead her out of this evil shadow,Out of these fancies wild;Let the holy love of the mother,Turn again to her child.“Make her lips like the lips of Mary,Kissing her blessed Son;Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,Rest on her little one.“Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,Open her prison door,And thine shall be all the gloryAnd praise forevermore.”Then into the face of its mother,The baby looked up and smiled;And the cloud of her soul was lifted,And she knew her little child.A beam of slant west sunshineMade the wan face almost fair,Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonderAnd the rings of pale gold hair.She kissed it on lip and forehead,She kissed it on cheek and chin;And she bared her snow-white bosomTo the lips so pale and thin.O, fair on her bridal morningWas the maid who blushed and smiledBut fairer to Ezra DaltonLooked the mother of his child.With more than a lover’s fondnessHe stooped to her worn young faceAnd the nursing child and the motherHe folded in one embrace.“Now mount and ride, my goodmanAs lovest thine own soul!Woe’s me if my wicked fanciesBe the death of Goody Cole!”His horse he saddled and bridled,And into the night rode he,—Now through the great black woodland;Now by the white-beached sea.He rode through the silent clearings,He came to the ferry wide,And thrice he called to the boatmanAsleep on the other side.He set his horse to the river,He swam to Newburg town,And he called up Justice SewallIn his nightcap and his gown.And the grave and worshipful justice,Upon whose soul be peace!Set his name to the jailer’s warrantFor Goody Cole’s release.Then through the night the hoof-beatsWent sounding like a flail:And Goody Cole at cock crowCame forth from Ipswich jail.

OR the fairest maid in Hampton

They needed not to search,

Who saw young Anna Favor

Come walking into church,—

Or bringing from the meadows,

At set of harvest-day,

The frolic of the blackbirds,

The sweetness of the hay.

Now the weariest of all mothers,

The saddest two-years bride,

She scowls in the face of her husband,

And spurns her child aside.

“Rake out the red coals, goodman,

For there the child shall lie,

Till the black witch comes to fetch her,

And both up chimney fly.

“It’s never my own little daughter,

It’s never my own,” she said;

“The witches have stolen my Anna,

And left me an imp instead.

“O, fair and sweet was my baby,

Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold;

But this is ugly and wrinkled,

Cross, and cunning, and old.

“I hate the touch of her fingers,

I hate the feel of her skin;

It’s not the milk from my bosom,

But my blood, that she sucks in.

“My face grows sharp with the torment;

Look! my arms are skin and bone!—

Rake open the red coals, goodman,

And the witch shall have her own.

“She’ll come when she hears it crying,

In the shape of an owl or bat,

And she’ll bring us our darling Anna

In place of her screeching brat.”

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,

Laid his hand upon her head:

“Thy sorrow is great, O woman!

I sorrow with thee,” he said.

“The paths to trouble are many,

And never but one sure way

Leads out to the light beyond it:

My poor wife, let us pray.”

Then he said to the great All-Father,

“Thy daughter is weak and blind;

Let her sight come back, and clothe her

Once more in her right mind.

“Lead her out of this evil shadow,

Out of these fancies wild;

Let the holy love of the mother,

Turn again to her child.

“Make her lips like the lips of Mary,

Kissing her blessed Son;

Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,

Rest on her little one.

“Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,

Open her prison door,

And thine shall be all the glory

And praise forevermore.”

Then into the face of its mother,

The baby looked up and smiled;

And the cloud of her soul was lifted,

And she knew her little child.

A beam of slant west sunshine

Made the wan face almost fair,

Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder

And the rings of pale gold hair.

She kissed it on lip and forehead,

She kissed it on cheek and chin;

And she bared her snow-white bosom

To the lips so pale and thin.

O, fair on her bridal morning

Was the maid who blushed and smiled

But fairer to Ezra Dalton

Looked the mother of his child.

With more than a lover’s fondness

He stooped to her worn young face

And the nursing child and the mother

He folded in one embrace.

“Now mount and ride, my goodman

As lovest thine own soul!

Woe’s me if my wicked fancies

Be the death of Goody Cole!”

His horse he saddled and bridled,

And into the night rode he,—

Now through the great black woodland;

Now by the white-beached sea.

He rode through the silent clearings,

He came to the ferry wide,

And thrice he called to the boatman

Asleep on the other side.

He set his horse to the river,

He swam to Newburg town,

And he called up Justice Sewall

In his nightcap and his gown.

And the grave and worshipful justice,

Upon whose soul be peace!

Set his name to the jailer’s warrant

For Goody Cole’s release.

Then through the night the hoof-beats

Went sounding like a flail:

And Goody Cole at cock crow

Came forth from Ipswich jail.

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.

THE ocean looketh up to heaven,As ’twere a living thing;The homage of its waves is givenIn ceaseless worshiping.They kneel upon the sloping sand,As bends the human knee,A beautiful and tireless band,The priesthood of the sea!They pour the glittering treasures outWhich in the deep have birth,And chant their awful hymns aboutThe watching hills of earth.The green earth sends its incense upFrom every mountain-shrine,From every flower and dewy cupThat greeteth the sunshine.The mists are lifted from the rills,Like the white wing of prayer;They lean above the ancient hills,As doing homage there.The forest-tops are lowly castO’er breezy hill and glen,As if a prayerful spirit pass’dOn nature as on men.The clouds weep o’er the fallen world,E’en as repentant love;Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d,They fade in light above.The sky is as a temple’s arch,The blue and wavy airIs glorious with the spirit-marchOf messengers at prayer.The gentle moon, the kindling sun,The many stars are given,As shrines to burn earth’s incense onThe altar-fires of Heaven!

HE ocean looketh up to heaven,

As ’twere a living thing;

The homage of its waves is given

In ceaseless worshiping.

They kneel upon the sloping sand,

As bends the human knee,

A beautiful and tireless band,

The priesthood of the sea!

They pour the glittering treasures out

Which in the deep have birth,

And chant their awful hymns about

The watching hills of earth.

The green earth sends its incense up

From every mountain-shrine,

From every flower and dewy cup

That greeteth the sunshine.

The mists are lifted from the rills,

Like the white wing of prayer;

They lean above the ancient hills,

As doing homage there.

The forest-tops are lowly cast

O’er breezy hill and glen,

As if a prayerful spirit pass’d

On nature as on men.

The clouds weep o’er the fallen world,

E’en as repentant love;

Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d,

They fade in light above.

The sky is as a temple’s arch,

The blue and wavy air

Is glorious with the spirit-march

Of messengers at prayer.

The gentle moon, the kindling sun,

The many stars are given,

As shrines to burn earth’s incense on

The altar-fires of Heaven!

THE BAREFOOT BOY.

BLESSINGS on thee, little man,Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!With thy turned up pantaloons,And thy merry whistled tunes;With thy red lip, redder stillKissed by strawberries on the hill;With the sunshine on thy face,Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace!From my heart I give thee joy;I was once a barefoot boy.Prince thou art—the grown-up man,Only is republican.Let the million-dollared ride!Barefoot, trudging at his side,Thou hast more than he can buy,In the reach of ear and eye:Outward sunshine, inward joy,Blessings on the barefoot boy.O! for boyhood’s painless play,Sleep that wakes in laughing day,Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,Knowledge never learned of schools:Of the wild bee’s morning chase,Of the wild flower’s time and place,Flight of fowl, and habitudeOf the tenants of the wood;How the tortoise bears his shell,How the woodchuck digs his cell,And the ground-mole sinks his well;How the robin feeds her young,How the oriole’s nest is hung;Where the whitest lilies blow,Where the freshest berries grow,Where the ground-nut trails its vine,Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;Of the black wasp’s cunning way,Mason of his walls of clay,And the architectural plansOf gray hornet artisans!For, eschewing books and tasks,Nature answers all he asks;Hand in hand with her he walks,Part and parcel of her joy,Blessings on the barefoot boy.O for boyhood’s time of June,Crowding years in one brief moon,When all things I heard or saw,Me, their master, waited for!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 conePurpled 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!Still, as my horizon grew,Larger grew my riches too,All the world I saw or knewSeemed a complex Chinese toy,Fashioned for a barefoot boy!O, for festal dainties spread,Like my bowl of milk and bread,Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,On the door-stone, gray 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 playOf the pied frogs’ orchestra;And, to light the noisy choir,Lit the fly his lamp of fire.I was monarch; pomp and joyWaited on the barefoot boy!Cheerily, then, my little man!Live and laugh as boyhood can;Though the flinty slopes be hard,Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,Every morn shall lead thee throughFresh baptisms of the dew;Every evening from thy feetShall the cool wind kiss the heat;All too soon these feet must hideIn the prison cells of pride,Lose the freedom of the sod,Like a colt’s for work be shod,Made to tread the mills of toil,Up and down in ceaseless moil,Happy if their track be foundNever on forbidden ground;Happy if they sink not inQuick and treacherous sands of sin.Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

LESSINGS on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned up pantaloons,

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace!

From my heart I give thee joy;

I was once a barefoot boy.

Prince thou art—the grown-up man,

Only is republican.

Let the million-dollared ride!

Barefoot, trudging at his side,

Thou hast more than he can buy,

In the reach of ear and eye:

Outward sunshine, inward joy,

Blessings on the barefoot boy.

O! for boyhood’s painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned of schools:

Of the wild bee’s morning chase,

Of the wild flower’s time and place,

Flight of fowl, and habitude

Of the tenants of the wood;

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

And the ground-mole sinks his well;

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole’s nest is hung;

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,

Where the ground-nut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;

Of the black wasp’s cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay,

And the architectural plans

Of gray hornet artisans!

For, eschewing books and tasks,

Nature answers all he asks;

Hand in hand with her he walks,

Part and parcel of her joy,

Blessings on the barefoot boy.

O for boyhood’s time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw,

Me, their master, waited for!

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!

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!

O, for festal dainties spread,

Like my bowl of milk and bread,

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone, gray 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!

Cheerily, then, my little man!

Live and laugh as boyhood can;

Though the flinty slopes be hard,

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,

Every morn shall lead thee through

Fresh baptisms of the dew;

Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat;

All too soon these feet must hide

In the prison cells of pride,

Lose the freedom of the sod,

Like a colt’s for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil,

Happy if their track be found

Never on forbidden ground;

Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

MAUD MULLER.

MAUD MULLER, on a summer’s day,Raked the meadow sweet with hay.Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealthOf simple beauty and rustic health.Singing, she wrought, and her merry gleeThe mock-bird echoed from his tree.But, when she glanced to the far off town,White from its hill-slope looking down,The sweet song died, and a vague unrestAnd a nameless longing filled her breast—A wish, that she hardly dared to own,For something better than she had known.The Judge rode slowly down the lane,Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.He drew his bridle in the shadeOf the apple-trees, to greet the maid.And ask a draught from the spring that flowedThrough the meadow across the road.She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,And filled for him her small tin cup,And blushed as she gave it, looking downOn her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.“Thanks!” said the Judge, “a sweeter draughtFrom a fairer hand was never quaffed.”He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,Of the singing birds and the humming bees;Then talked of the haying, and wondered whetherThe cloud in the west would bring foul weather.And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,And her graceful ankles bare and brown;And listened, while a pleased surpriseLooked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.At last, like one who for delaySeeks a vain excuse, he rode away.Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!That I the Judge’s bride might be!“He would dress me up in silks so fine,And praise and toast me at his wine.“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;My brother should sail a painted boat.“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,And the baby should have a new toy each day.“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,And all should bless me who left our door.”The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,And saw Maud Muller standing still.“A form more fair, a face more sweet,Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.“And her modest answer and graceful airShow her wise and good as she is fair.“Would she were mine, and I to-day,Like her, a harvester of hay:“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,“But low of cattle, and song of birds,And health, and quiet, and loving words.”But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,And Maud was left in the field alone.But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,When he hummed in court an old love-tune;And the young girl mused beside the well,Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.He wedded a wife of richest dower,Who lived for fashion, as he for power.Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,He watched a picture come and go;And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyesLooked out in their innocent surprise.Oft when the wine in his glass was red,He longed for the wayside well instead;And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,“Ah, that I were free again!“Free as when I rode that day,Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”She wedded a man unlearned and poor,And many children played round her door.But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,Left their traces on heart and brain.And oft, when the summer sun shone hotOn the new mown hay in the meadow lot,And she heard the little spring brook fallOver the roadside, through the wall,In the shade of the apple-tree againShe saw a rider draw his rein,And gazing down with timid grace,She felt his pleased eyes read her face.Sometimes her narrow kitchen wallsStretched away into stately halls;The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,The tallow candle an astral burned;And for him who sat by the chimney lug,Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,A manly form at her side she saw,And joy was duty and love was law.Then she took up her burden of life again,Saying only, “It might have been.”Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,For rich repiner and household drudge!God pity them both! and pity us all,Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;For of all sad words of tongue or pen,The saddest are these: “It might have been!”Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope liesDeeply buried from human eyes;And, in the hereafter, angels mayRoll the stone from its grave away!

AUD MULLER, on a summer’s day,

Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth

Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But, when she glanced to the far off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast—

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,

Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid.

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed

Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,

And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down

On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

“Thanks!” said the Judge, “a sweeter draught

From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,

Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether

The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,

And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surprise

Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay

Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!

That I the Judge’s bride might be!

“He would dress me up in silks so fine,

And praise and toast me at his wine.

“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;

My brother should sail a painted boat.

“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,

And the baby should have a new toy each day.

“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,

And all should bless me who left our door.”

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

“A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.

“And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

“Would she were mine, and I to-day,

Like her, a harvester of hay:

“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

“But low of cattle, and song of birds,

And health, and quiet, and loving words.”

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,

And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,

And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well,

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,

Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,

He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes

Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft when the wine in his glass was red,

He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,

To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,

“Ah, that I were free again!

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,

And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,

Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot

On the new mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall

Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again

She saw a rider draw his rein,

And gazing down with timid grace,

She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls

Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,

The tallow candle an astral burned;

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,

Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,

And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,

Saying only, “It might have been.”

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!

MEMORIES.

ABEAUTIFUL and happy girlWith step as soft as summer air,And fresh young lip and brow of pearlShadow’d by many a careless curlOf unconfined and flowing hair:A seeming child in every thingSave thoughtful brow, and ripening charms,As nature wears the smile of springWhen sinking into summer’s arms.A mind rejoicing in the lightWhich melted through its graceful bower,Leaf after leaf serenely brightAnd stainless in its holy whiteUnfolding like a morning flower:A heart, which, like a fine-toned luteWith 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 chainOf 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 lean’d to hear thee speak,Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.I hear again thy low replies,I feel thy arm within my own,And timidly again upriseThe fringed lids of hazel eyesWith 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 smiledMy picture of thy youth to see,When half a woman, half a child,Thy very artlessness beguiled,And folly’s self seem’d wise in thee.I too can smile, when o’er that hourThe lights of memory backward stream,Yet feel the while that manhood’s powerIs vainer than my boyhood’s dream.Years have pass’d on, and left their traceOf graver care and deeper thought;And unto me the calm, cold faceOf manhood, and to thee the graceOf woman’s pensive beauty brought,On life’s rough blasts for blame or praiseThe schoolboy’s name has widely flown;Thine in the green and quiet waysOf unobtrusive goodness known.And wider yet in thought and deedOur still diverging thoughts incline,Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed,While answers to my spirit’s needThe Yorkshire peasant’s simple line.For thee the priestly rite and prayer,And holy day and solemn psalm,For me the silent reverence whereMy brethren gather, slow and calm.Yet hath thy spirit left on meAn impress time has not worn out,And something of myself in thee,A shadow from the past, I seeLingering even yet thy way about;Not wholly can the heart unlearnThat lesson of its better hours,Not yet has Time’s dull footstep wornTo common dust that path of flowers.Thus, while at times before our eyeThe clouds about the present part,And, smiling through them, round us lieSoft hues of memory’s morning sky—The Indian summer of the heart,In secret sympathies of mind,In founts of feeling which retainTheir pure, fresh flow, we yet may findOur early dreams not wholly vain!

BEAUTIFUL and happy girl

With step as soft as summer air,

And fresh young lip and brow of pearl

Shadow’d by many a careless curl

Of unconfined and flowing hair:

A seeming child in every thing

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 serenely 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 lean’d to hear thee speak,

Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.

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 seem’d wise in thee.

I too can smile, when o’er that hour

The lights of memory backward stream,

Yet feel the while that manhood’s power

Is vainer than my boyhood’s dream.

Years have pass’d 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 beauty brought,

On life’s rough blasts for blame or praise

The schoolboy’s name has widely flown;

Thine in the green and quiet ways

Of unobtrusive goodness known.

And wider yet in thought and deed

Our still diverging thoughts incline,

Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed,

While answers to my spirit’s need

The Yorkshire peasant’s simple line.

For thee the priestly rite and prayer,

And holy day and solemn psalm,

For me the silent reverence where

My brethren gather, slow and calm.

Yet hath thy spirit left on me

An impress time has not worn 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,

Not yet has Time’s dull footstep worn

To common dust that path of flowers.

Thus, while at times before our eye

The clouds about the present part,

And, smiling through them, round us lie

Soft hues of memory’s morning sky—

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 PRISONER FOR DEBT.

LOOK on him—through his dungeon-grate,Feebly and cold, the morning lightComes stealing round him, dim and late,As if it loathed the sight.Reclining on his strawy bed,His hand upholds his drooping head—His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard,Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;And o’er his bony fingers flowHis long, dishevell’d locks of snow.No grateful fire before him glows,—And yet the winter’s breath is chill:And o’er his half-clad person goesThe frequent ague-thrill!Silent—save ever and anon,A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,Forces apart the painful gripOf the old sufferer’s bearded lip:O, sad and crushing is the fateOf old age chain’d and desolate!JustGod! why lies that old man there?A murderer shares his prison-bed,Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,Gleam on him fierce and red;And the rude oath and heartless jeerFall ever on his loathing ear,And, or in wakefulness or sleepNerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,Crimson’d with murder, touches him!What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done?Has murder stain’d his hands with gore?Not so: his crime’s a fouler one:God made the old man poor!For this he shares a felon’s cell—The fittest earthly type of hell!For this—the boon for which he pour’dHis young blood on the invader’s sword,And counted light the fearful cost—His blood-gain’d liberty is lost!And so, for such a place of rest,Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rainOn Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,And Saratoga’s plain?Look forth, thou man of many scars,Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars!It must be joy, in sooth, to seeYon monument uprear’d to thee—Piled granite and a prison cell—The land repays thy service well!Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,And fling the starry banner out;Shout “Freedom!” till your lisping onesGive back their cradle-shout:Let boasted eloquence declaimOf honor, liberty, and fame;Still let the poet’s strain be heard,With “glory” for each second word,And everything with breath agreeTo praise, “our glorious liberty!”And when the patriot cannon jarsThat prison’s cold and gloomy wall,And through its grates the stripes and starsRise on the wind, and fall—Think ye that prisoner’s aged earRejoices in the general cheer!Think ye his dim and failing eyeIs kindled at your pageantry?Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb,What is your carnival to him?Down with the law that binds him thus!Unworthy freemen, let it findNo refuge from the withering curseOfGodand human kind!Open the prisoner’s living tomb,And usher from its brooding gloomThe victims of your savage code,To the free sun and air ofGod!No longer dare as crime to brand,The chastening of the Almighty’s hand!

OOK on him—through his dungeon-grate,

Feebly and cold, the morning light

Comes stealing round him, dim and late,

As if it loathed the sight.

Reclining on his strawy bed,

His hand upholds his drooping head—

His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard,

Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;

And o’er his bony fingers flow

His long, dishevell’d locks of snow.

No grateful fire before him glows,—

And yet the winter’s breath is chill:

And o’er his half-clad person goes

The frequent ague-thrill!

Silent—save ever and anon,

A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,

Forces apart the painful grip

Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip:

O, sad and crushing is the fate

Of old age chain’d and desolate!

JustGod! why lies that old man there?

A murderer shares his prison-bed,

Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,

Gleam on him fierce and red;

And the rude oath and heartless jeer

Fall ever on his loathing ear,

And, or in wakefulness or sleep

Nerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,

Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,

Crimson’d with murder, touches him!

What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done?

Has murder stain’d his hands with gore?

Not so: his crime’s a fouler one:

God made the old man poor!

For this he shares a felon’s cell—

The fittest earthly type of hell!

For this—the boon for which he pour’d

His young blood on the invader’s sword,

And counted light the fearful cost—

His blood-gain’d liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rain

On Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,

And Saratoga’s plain?

Look forth, thou man of many scars,

Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars!

It must be joy, in sooth, to see

Yon monument uprear’d to thee—

Piled granite and a prison cell—

The land repays thy service well!

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,

And fling the starry banner out;

Shout “Freedom!” till your lisping ones

Give back their cradle-shout:

Let boasted eloquence declaim

Of honor, liberty, and fame;

Still let the poet’s strain be heard,

With “glory” for each second word,

And everything with breath agree

To praise, “our glorious liberty!”

And when the patriot cannon jars

That prison’s cold and gloomy wall,

And through its grates the stripes and stars

Rise on the wind, and fall—

Think ye that prisoner’s aged ear

Rejoices in the general cheer!

Think ye his dim and failing eye

Is kindled at your pageantry?

Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb,

What is your carnival to him?

Down with the law that binds him thus!

Unworthy freemen, let it find

No refuge from the withering curse

OfGodand human kind!

Open the prisoner’s living tomb,

And usher from its brooding gloom

The victims of your savage code,

To the free sun and air ofGod!

No longer dare as crime to brand,

The chastening of the Almighty’s hand!

THE STORM.

FROM “SNOW-BOUND.”

Snow-bound is regarded as Whittier’s master-piece, as a descriptive and reminiscent poem. It is a New England Fireside Idyl, which in its faithfulness recalls, “The Winter Evening,” of Cowper, and Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night”; but in sweetness and animation, it is superior to either of these. Snow-bound is a faithful description of a winter scene, familiar in the country surrounding Whittier’s home in Connecticut. The complete poem is published in illustrated form byMessrs.Houghton, Mifflin &Co., by whose♦permission this extract is here inserted.

♦‘permisssion’ replaced with ‘permission’

UNWARNED by any sunset lightThe gray day darkened into night,A night made hoary with the swarmAnd whirl-dance of the blinding storm,As zigzag wavering to and froCrossed and recrossed the winged snow;And ere the early bedtime cameThe white drift piled the window-frame,And through the glass the clothes-line postsLooked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.So all night long the storm roared on:The morning broke without a sun;In tiny spherule traced with linesOf Nature’s geometric signs,In starry flake, and pellicle,All day the hoary meteor fell;And, when the second morning shone,We looked upon a world unknown,On nothing we could call our own.Around the glistening wonder bentThe blue walls of the firmament,No cloud above, no earth below,—A universe of sky and snow!The old familiar sight of oursTook marvelous shapes; strange domes and towersRose up where sty or corn-crib stood,Or garden wall, or belt of wood;A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,A fenceless drift what once was road;The bridle-post an old man satWith loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;The well-curb had a Chinese roof;And even the long sweep, high aloof,In its slant splendor, seemed to tellOf Pisa’s leaning miracle.A prompt, decisive man, no breathOur father wasted: “Boys, a path!”Well pleased, (for when did farmer boyCount such a summons less than joy?)Our buskins on our feet we drew;With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,To guard our necks and ears from snow,We cut the solid whiteness through,And, where the drift was deepest, madeA tunnel walled and overlaidWith dazzling crystal: we had readOf rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,And to our own his name we gave,With many a wish the luck were oursTo test his lamp’s supernal powers.

NWARNED by any sunset light

The gray day darkened into night,

A night made hoary with the swarm

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag wavering to and fro

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow;

And ere the early bedtime came

The white drift piled the window-frame,

And through the glass the clothes-line posts

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:

The morning broke without a sun;

In tiny spherule traced with lines

Of Nature’s geometric signs,

In starry flake, and pellicle,

All day the hoary meteor fell;

And, when the second morning shone,

We looked upon a world unknown,

On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent

The blue walls of the firmament,

No cloud above, no earth below,—

A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sight of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy

Count such a summons less than joy?)

Our buskins on our feet we drew;

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,

To guard our necks and ears from snow,

We cut the solid whiteness through,

And, where the drift was deepest, made

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had read

Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,

And to our own his name we gave,

With many a wish the luck were ours

To test his lamp’s supernal powers.

ICHABOD.

The following poem was written on hearing of Daniel Webster’s course in supporting the “Compromise Measure,” including the “Fugitive Slave Law”. This speech was delivered in the United States Senate on the7thof March, 1850, and greatly incensed the Abolitionists.Mr.Whittier, in common with many New Englanders, regarded it as the certain downfall ofMr.Webster. The lines are full of tender regret, deep grief and touching pathos.

SO fallen! so lost! the light withdrawnWhich once he wore!The glory from his gray hairs goneFor evermore!Revile him not,—the Tempter hathA snare for all!And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,Befit his fall.Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage,When he who mightHave lighted up and led his ageFalls back in night.Scorn! would the angels laugh to markA bright soul driven,Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,From hope and heaven?Let not the land, once proud of him,Insult him now,Nor brand with deeper shame his dimDishonor’d brow.But let its humbled sons, instead,From sea to lake,A long lament, as for the dead,In sadness make.Of all we loved and honor’d, noughtSave power remains,—A fallen angel’s pride of thoughtStill strong in chains.All else is gone; from those great eyesThe soul has fled:When faith is lost, when honor dies,The man is dead!Then pay the reverence of old daysTo his dead fame;Walk backward with averted gaze,And hide the shame!

O fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone

For evermore!

Revile him not,—the Tempter hath

A snare for all!

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,

Befit his fall.

Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage,

When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age

Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark

A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,

From hope and heaven?

Let not the land, once proud of him,

Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim

Dishonor’d brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,

From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,

In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honor’d, nought

Save power remains,—

A fallen angel’s pride of thought

Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes

The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,

The man is dead!

Then pay the reverence of old days

To his dead fame;

Walk backward with averted gaze,

And hide the shame!

Souvenir of Whittier

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