And when, in pleasant harvest moons, The youthful huskers gather, Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways Defy the winter weather, 'In sugar-camps, when south and warm The winds of March are blowing, And sweetly from its thawing veins The maple's blood is flowing, In summer, where some lilied pond 'The coarseness of a ruder time 370 380 390 'Her presence lends its warmth and health To all who come before it. If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it. For larger life and wiser aims The farmer is her debtor; 1 See the note on Longfellow's Evangeline,' p. 121. Whittier wrote to Mrs. Fields in November, 1870: You know that a thousand of the Acadians were distributed among the towns of Massachusetts, where they were mostly treated as paupers.' In the letter already quoted in the note on Evangeline, he says: The children were bound out to the families in the localities in which they resided; and I wrote a poem upon finding, in the records of Haverhill, the indenture that bound an Acadian girl as a servant in one of the families of that neighborhood. Gathering the story of her death, I wrote "Marguerite."' |