In 1833 he signed the
National Anti-Slavery Declaration as one of the delegates from Mas-
sachusetts; in 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature;
in 1837 he was for a few months in New York as one of the secreta-
ries of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and from 1837 to 1840 he
was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, a Philadelphia abolitionist
journal.
National Anti-Slavery Declaration as one of the delegates from Mas-
sachusetts; in 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature;
in 1837 he was for a few months in New York as one of the secreta-
ries of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and from 1837 to 1840 he
was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, a Philadelphia abolitionist
journal.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father drop together,
And the double grave awaits them. )
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined.
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing. )
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
## p. 15902 (#238) ##########################################
15902
WALT WHITMAN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOMED
I
HEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the
night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
WF
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -0 moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared -0 the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless - O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!
-
3
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed
palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong
I love,
With every leaf a miracle; — and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song. -
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die).
## p. 15903 (#239) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15903
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped
from the ground, spotting the gray débris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the end-
less grass,
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women
standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting dépôt, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these
you journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,-
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
For, fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, o death. )
## p. 15904 (#240) ##########################################
15904
WALT WHITMAN
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked,
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side (while the
other stars all looked on),
As we wandered together the solemn night (for something. I know
not what, kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full
you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black
of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you;
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
IO
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has
gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
II
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?
## p. 15905 (#241) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15905
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid
and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chim-
neys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.
I 2
Lo, body and soul — this land,
My, own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading, bathing all, the fulfilled noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses; pour your chant from the
bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer!
You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
XXVII–995
## p. 15906 (#242) ##########################################
15906
WALT WHITMAN
14
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and
forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturbed winds and the
storms),
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its
meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent-
lo, then and there,
[rest,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands
of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dim-
ness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands iny comrades in the night,
And the voice of iny spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come, lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death.
## p. 15907 (#243) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15907
Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise ! praise !
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, strong deliveress!
When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Lazed in the flood of thy bliss, O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee, I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee;
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night -
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering ware whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies
wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night,
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I
saw them,
## p. 15908 (#244) ##########################################
15908
WALT WHITMAN
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
-
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them;
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought, -
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not:
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my
soul,
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding
the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing
with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep,
for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and this for
his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
## p. 15909 (#245) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15909
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O
CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is
won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
Wnile follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells:
Rise up! - for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills,
- -
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the shores a-crowd-
ing;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has nor pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4th, 1865)
USHED be the camps to-day,
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate
Our dear commander's death.
H
No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat;- no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky,
## p. 15910 (#246) ##########################################
15910
WALT WHITMAN
But sing, poet, in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in camps,
know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing as they close the doors of earth upon him
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
one verse,
«DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL »
D
AREST thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O soul,
Nor dost thou; all is a blank before us;
All waits undreamed-of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all! ) them to fulfill, O soul.
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
A
NOISELESS patient spider
I marked, where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how, to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament; filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, () my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to con-
nect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you Aling catch somewhere, O my soul.
## p. 15910 (#247) ##########################################
## p. 15910 (#248) ##########################################
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## p. 15910 (#249) ##########################################
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## p. 15910 (#250) ##########################################
3
## p. 15911 (#251) ##########################################
15911
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
(1807-1892)
BY GEORGE R. CARPENTER
ull appreciation of Whittier's work depends to an unusual
degree on an understanding of his life and character. The
verse of his equally celebrated contemporary, Longfellow,
for example, needs little explanation; Longfellow's career was that of
the student, the traveler, the genial professor. His tastes, his sympa-
thies, his ambitions, were not widely separated from those of men of
letters throughout the world. With Whittier the case was entirely
different. He was born of simple farming folk; his formal education
was merely that of the district school and the country academy; the
experience of travel was denied him. He sprang from the soil of
New England, showing to the full the virtues and defects of his an-
cestry and environment; and his singular merit is that he represents,
with extraordinary success, the most winning side of country life in
his native district, - its faith, its theocratic conception of the State, its
indignation at injustice, its stalwart upholding of the dignity of labor,
its old content in simple joys and simple duties. Not only has Whit-
tier expressed in his verse emotions peculiar in many ways to
America, and common to a large body of Americans, but there is no
other one of our poets, of the body of whose work this could be said.
That he was able thus to hold fast to old ideals, and to depict with
sympathy native life and country ways, — that he did not desert his
homely subjects and homely style for the more European matter and
diction of his contemporaries, — was due to circumstances that iso-
lated him from city life and the foreign influences that are so plainly
revealed in their work.
John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17th, 1807, in Haver-
hill, Massachusetts, of a family that had been permanently settled
in that immediate vicinity since the early days of the seventeenth
century. Until he was nearly twenty, he had no educational advan-
tages besides those afforded by the ordinary district school. In 1827
and 1828, however, he attended the Haverhill Academy. For a year
he was in the employ of a Boston printing-house, where he edited a
Protectionist paper and a temperance journal. For another year he
was the editor of the New England Weekly Review in Hartford, in
## p. 15912 (#252) ##########################################
15912
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
which he succeeded George D. Prentice.
In 1833 he signed the
National Anti-Slavery Declaration as one of the delegates from Mas-
sachusetts; in 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature;
in 1837 he was for a few months in New York as one of the secreta-
ries of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and from 1837 to 1840 he
was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, a Philadelphia abolitionist
journal. With the exception of the absences occasioned by these
duties, Whittier's long life was almost entirely spent in Essex County,
Massachusetts; either in Haverhill, Amesbury, or Danvers. He died in
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 8th, 1892. .
Thomas Whittier, the emigrant founder of the family, is said to
have been a Huguenot. His immense energy and unflinching devo-
tion to moral aims made him a typical Puritan: but he showed a
vein of unusual toleration in religious matters, by taking the side of
some persecuted members of the Society of Friends; and during his
lifetime his son married a Quaker. The wife's influence prevailed;
and henceforth, with few exceptions, the family followed her simple
and noble faith. Whittier's own father was an active, taciturn man,
the type of independent conservatism and of the virtuous and indus-
trious freeman on whom the commonwealth rests. His mother was an
equally fine type of the Quaker matron, whose religion found expres-
sion in an ideally beautiful character. His early life was that of the
ordinary country lad,— full of effort and discipline, free from affecta-
tion,-a circumscribed life, in which the outer world of cities is
unrealized, and the attention is rarely called beyond the limits of the
township and the county. The Whittiers were small farmers; and
their means and the Quaker creed alike discouraged special efforts
for worldly education. The boy performed, year in, year out, his
simple country tasks, acquiring the scant learning of the district
school, and retaining it with a firmness of grasp that was stimulated
by lack of wide opportunity. His native tongue he knew as only a
country boy of his time could know it, drawing deep from the homely
language of the people, which clung closer to the idioms of the great
centuries than did the diction of the lettered world,— a language
ennobled by the pioneer's close contact with life and nature, and
chastened by the constant influence of the Bible. He was early a
rhymester; and some lines sent to a local paper brought him to the
attention of a larger circle of friends and led to wider opportunities.
His facile, boyish verse dealt often with national history and public
interests, and his trend of mind led him to journalism and politics.
By 1832 he had won a name for himself in both fields, and seemed
likely to represent his district in Congress.
Two influences intervened to prevent Whittier's being drawn into
the vortex of the city and under the sway of its alien ideals, and
## p. 15913 (#253) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15913
attached him permanently to the rural life of his boyhood. His del-
icate health made impossible for him the activity and anxiety of a
journalist's career; and his spirit, which was that of the reformer,
bound him to what then seemed the lost cause of the abolition
movement. To support oneself in the field of letters was then
scarcely possible; especially for an abolitionist, who was by no means
a welcome contributor to any periodical which sought a wide and
tolerant circulation. Debarred, therefore, from the professional pur-
suit of letters, journalism, and politics, Whittier resigned himself to
the quiet life of the countryman. Until he was past middle age his
copyrights were valueless: but he was for many years a paid con-
tributor to the most important abolitionist journal, the Washington
National Era, in which Uncle Tom's Cabin' appeared as a serial;
his habits were frugal and his wants few. When the success of his
political ideals was assured, when his voice was recognized through-
out the North as that of the poet of freedom, and the popularity of
his verse had put him beyond the reach of want, he still lived in
the homely fashion of his ancestors, shunning the jostle and jar of
cities and crowded resorts. An honored friend of the great and the
learned, he consistently held himself aloof from all entanglements
that would disturb the Quaker simplicity and Puritan strenuousness
of his life, always in perfect sympathy with the old New England
ideals and traditions.
Whittier's spirit was that of the reformer. As a boy he wrote
that he would rather have “the memory of a Howard, a Wilberforce,
or a Clarkson, than the undying fame of a Byron. ” As editor for a
time of an antislavery journal, and by his pamphlets and poems, he
was one of the foremost in advancing the claims of his despised but
rapidly growing party. In practical politics his services were equally
strenuous and even more effective. He was the friend and adviser
of statesmen; he was, on occasion, a shrewd lobbyist in the Massa-
chusetts Legislature; and in his own district he was the recognized
head of a party that held the balance of power, and was accustomed
cannily to pledge the candidate whom it honored with its vote. But
whatever were his secret services in the direction of public affairs,
Whittier first won his reputation by a remarkable series of anti-
slavery poems, which arrested attention and molded public opinion.
Beyond any other American poet, he had the power of expressing,
in a striking way, the latent thought of plain people. His Kansas
Emigrants became actually the song of those who
crossed the prairie, as of old
The Pilgrims crossed the sea. )
“We wait beneath the furnace blast,” were the words of every noble
Northern heart during the years of the great trial; and other verses
## p. 15914 (#254) ##########################################
15914
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
of far inferior quality, now forgotten, were not without a strong influ-
ence on all ranks of society, from the President and his Cabinet to
the lowest soldier and taxpayer. The best of these political tracts
in verse had in them the genuine singing quality of Whittier's best
work. They were all efficacious; but they were militant in quality,
instruments in a transient struggle, the product of discord and sec-
tional feeling, and hence hardly destined to live in the national mem-
ory. One ballad alone of this sort, Barbara Frietchie,' is thoroughly
familiar to the younger generation, and will long survive as a tribute
to Northern bravery and Southern chivalry.
Whittier's religious verse is much more national in character.
Here the progress of the century has worked as plainly for the per-
manence of his fame as it has worked against that of his political
verse. His political verse tended to perpetuate differences of opinion
that were soon settled forever. His religious verse, on the other
hand, steadily prefigured a unity of feeling to which gentle souls of
all creeds aspire. For many decades all the Protestant sects in
America have been moving slowly toward the Quaker standpoint, —
tending to acknowledge that always, by the mouths of prophets,
poets, priests, and philosophers, God hath revealed himself; and that
the living spirit of God, acting upon the hearts of men, is the great
guide in matters of conduct and belief. Whittier's Quaker tolerance,
his life of moral earnestness, his leisure for meditation, his own gen-
tle, unspotted character, and his simple way of taking the world, -
all these made him a fitting spokesman in verse of the most lib-
eral religious feeling of his day. The main motives of his creed are
always the “eternal goodness of God, and faith in immortality,–
truths so deeply rooted historically in the conceptions of our race
that denial of them has the air of painful novelty, as of some new
city notion that troubles but for an instant the abiding peace of the
ancestral and rural faith.
It is, however, by his verses on country life, rather than by his
political or religious poetry, that Whittier will be remembered. It
must be kept in mind that almost the whole of his long life was
spent in a single county of a single State. This district that Whit-
tier knew so well is richly dowered by nature; and except for the
absence of mountains, is thoroughly typical of New England. It is
well populated, and yet is free from large cities; it has a wild sea-
coast and sandy beaches, hills, dales, meadows, and forests, farming
villages and fishing towns, - an epitome, so it chanced, of tlre diversi-
fied scenery and occupations of a whole group of States. Here Whit-
tier — a bachelor and an invalid, not bound by the ties and the labors
that cominonly blind men to wider thoughts than society and fortune,
following pursuits that gave ample leisure for meditation - lived, with
Quaker and Puritan frugality, a life full of reminiscence of boyhood
## p. 15915 (#255) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15915
days, and of sympathy with the country ways that had never ceased
to be his. And this reminiscence and this sympathy became in his
verse the voice of a whole multitude, East and West, that still toiled
in the fields, or looked gladly back from city counting-houses to the
orchards and brooks of their early years.
This body of country verse falls naturally into several distinct
parts, the least important of which is that dealing with labor. Whit-
tier had wrought with his own hands, and had known in his own soul
the primal curse,— the unrelenting toil, the brutal weariness, the mere
pittance of gain; and though he prized the feeling of self-reliance,
the consciousness of physical strength and independence, that are
in some degree the farmer's blessing, his poetry happily lacks the
mistaken ardor of the professor's pastoral rhyme or the rant of the
walking delegate's harangue. He turned more gladly to the gentler
side of farm life,- the evening by the hearth, the old-fashioned
frolics of the husking; more gladly yet, in song and ballad, to the
quaint and stirring romance of New England's history. This, Long-
fellow also treated, but not quite in native fashion; laboring to give
to familiar traditions the flavor of the Continental idyls he knew too
well. Whittier was not forced to cram himself with strange, anti-
quarian learning. He wrote of his own townspeople of the earlier
centuries, — the German cobbler, the mad Irishman who planted the
sycamores, the shipwrecked sailor who dug the well; of the tradi-
tions of his country, — of the Salem witchcraft, the ride of Skipper
Ireson, the haunted garrison of Cape Ann, the prophecy of Samuel
Sewell, the swan-song of Parson Avery; of the persecuted progenitors
of his own creed. Whatever be the deficiencies of these verses, they
are not literary exercises, but spontaneous expressions of genuine feel-
ing and interest. The days of the fine old ballads are over long ago,
but these are of their very kin.
Three themes, favorites of Whittier's, deserve special mention:
the joys of childhood in the country; the equality, before the power
of love, of rich and poor, laborer and aristocrat; and the lost oppor-
tunities of country life, where the mistakes of youth are more irrep-
arable than in a society less pliable. The first is most completely
handled in the 'Barefoot Boy' and 'Snow-Bound”; the second in
Amy Wentworth'; the third — less common, as if too intimate for
public expression - in Maud Muller. ) In the treatment in verse of
such themes, so close to the hearts of the people, Whittier has not
been equaled among us. Of the modern child in the modern city,
with his gloves, his idleness, and his precocious knowledge of guile,
Whittier could not have written. But with the country boy, his
acquaintance was intimate; and as long as we exist whose unshod
feet have trodden the lanes and byways, as long as there be those
## p. 15916 (#256) ##########################################
15916
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
that turn back the wheel of memory to the days of the pastures, the
woods, and the hills, with a lingering touch of genuine sentiment for
the curls of our first rosy-cheeked sweethearts, his verse will serve
to awaken recollections that are of the very essence of poetry.
That love should mate where it will, the second of Whittier's
favorite themes, is not often now a topic of narrative in the East,
though in the West it reappears triumphantly in Mr. Hamlin Gar-
land's charming and democratic stories. The doctrine - to wit, that
all brave and honest hearts, of whatever sect or station, may fairly
love and marry — is almost as classic as that of the Declaration of
Independence; and is essentially American in principle and practice.
In other fields of literature the theme is still common: in tragedy
and comedy we note the many exceptions to the rule; in the novel
we discuss the problem in all its bearings. In Whittier's verse alone
is the doctrine stated with lyric feeling, in types to which the fresh
breezes of the meadows or the sea give undying youth, so that the
heart yields the assent that the judgment might withhold. The
third theme, “It might have been,” though less rarely touched on,
even in Whittier's verse, is one peculiarly appropriate in a land where
the opportunity for good fortune seems to come at least once to
nearly all; and especially in the country, where lost opportunity is
so well-nigh irretrievable. Many a broken man or weary woman, in
grinding poverty or misery, has repeated as his own the «saddest
words” of Whittier's now hackneyed couplet.
Whittier's fame has not proved world-wide. Even in other English-
speaking lands his verse is little known, and beyond the limits of
our language it has scarcely reached. The ways of other nations are
not ours; our history, our traditions, are not theirs. Whittier's metre
often halts; his rhymes sometimes grate on the punctilious ear,
though he followed accurately the local speech of his district. His
measures, often smooth, are almost always monotonous; and except
in his rhymed couplets, he is at his best when he is nearest the old
fours and threes of the psalm tunes. His verse deals only with sim-
ple things, uncomplicated and sincere emotions: the justice and mercy
of God; the freedom of man; the nobility of independence: the beauty
of love, before which all are equal; the dear memories of early life
and early affection. But ours is a new, and to a large extent, a pas-
toral nation. The great majority of the native-born are still at the
plowtail or fresh from it; and to all of us, what Whittier sings is dear.
For he sings. The tune is simple; but the notes are fresh and clear,
the melody has the thrill of the robin's and the wood-thrush's songs,
the feeling is that of the genuine lyric that comes from the heart
and therefore goes to it. We have not yet had world-poets in Amer-
ica, but Whittier's verse is that to which the American born and
## p. 15917 (#257) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15917
bred responds most naturally. We must look clsewhere for learning,
for philosophy, for exotic beauty. Whittier's was the voice that more
than a generation ago proclaimed most clearly the duty of man, and
that now calls us most sweetly to thoughts of olden days.
ARE
[All the following poems by Mr. Whittier have been copyrighted, and they
are reprinted here by permission of Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers. )
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
O"
F ALL the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human hack,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borák, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:-
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! ”
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
## p. 15918 (#258) ##########################################
15918
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang —
Over and over the Mænads sang:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!
Small pity for him! — He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,-
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own townspeople on her deck!
“Lay by! lay by! ) they called to him:
Back he answered, “Sink or swim !
Brag of your catch of fish again!
And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie for evermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,-
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? -
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide:
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
## p. 15919 (#259) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15919
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting far and near —
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
“Hear me, neighbors! ” at last he cried,
« What to me is this noisy ride ?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within ?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me,
I only dread
The hand of God and the face of the dead ! »
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, “God has touched him! — why should we ? »
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
“Cut the rogue's tether and let him run! »
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
TELLING THE BEES
H*
ERE is the place: right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred.
And the poplars tall:
## p. 15920 (#260) ##########################################
15920
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,–
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.
There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair,
And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed, -
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.
I can see it all now,- - the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before, -
The house and the trees,
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
## p. 15921 (#261) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15921
Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away. ”
But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:-
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone! ”
MAUD MULLER
M
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,
XXVII—996
## p. 15922 (#262) ##########################################
15922
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
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 brier-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,
## p. 15923 (#263) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15923
«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 childbirth 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,
## p. 15924 (#264) ##########################################
15924
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
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 spinet 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.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE
U"
P FROM the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished Rebel horde,
## p. 15925 (#265) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15925
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall, -
-
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the Rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
« Halt! » — the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
« Fire! ) - out blazed the rifle-blast.
(C
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
(Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word:
«Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!
