66

work that can be praised, when measured by others of the sort, as heartily as we praise the "Biglow Papers or "Evangeline," and one that ranks next to them as an American poem. This "Winter Idyl" is honestly named. Under the title, however, is a passage from Cornelius Agrippa on the "Fire of Wood," followed by Emerson's matchless heralding of the snow-storm. Devices of this kind add to the effect of such a poem, only, as The Ancient Mariner." The texts are needless at the outset of a work whose lovely and unliterary cast is sufficient in itself. From the key struck at the opening to the tender fall at the close, there is a sense of proportion, an adequacy and yet a restraint, not always observed in Whittier. This is a sustained performance that conforms to the maxim ne quid nimis. Its genuineness is proved by a severe test, the concord with which imaginative passages glide Realism. into homely, realistic verse:

"The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

"Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, -
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows."

The gray day darkens to

“A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm;

A DOWN-EAST TENIERS.

119

The poet's child-vision makes this fancy natural and Fancy. not grotesque. The whole transfiguration is recalled:

"The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;

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."

Imaginative touches follow:

"The shrieking of the mindless wind,

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.

From the crest

Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank

From sight beneath the smothering bank."

Imagination.

interior.

The building and lighting of the wood-fire, the hov- A graphic ering family group that

"watched the first red blaze appear,

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,"

the rude-furnished room thus glorified and transformed,
while even

"The cat's dark silhouette on the wall

A couchant tiger's seemed to fall,”

all this is an interior painted by our Merrimack Teniers. His hand grows free in artless delineations of each sharer of the charmed blockade: the father, with his stories of woodcraft and adventure; the Quaker mother rehearsing tales from Sewell and Chalkley

master

biece.

"of faith fire-winged by martyrdom"; then a foil to
these, the unlettered uncle "rich in lore of fields and
brooks,"

"A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began";

the maiden aunt; the elder sister, full of self-sacri-
fice, a true New England girl; lastly, the "youngest
and dearest," seated on the braided mat,

"Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes."

The guests are no less vividly portrayed. The schoolmaster, distinct as Goldsmith's, is of an original type. The group is completed, with an instinct for color and contrast, by the introduction of a dramatic figure, the half-tropical, prophetic woman, who was born to startle, on her desert throne,

The crazy Queen of Lebanon

With claims fantastic as her own."

The poem returns to its theme, and records the days of farm-house life during the chill embargo of the snow, until

"a week had passed

Since the great world was heard from last."

But the treading oxen break out the highways, the rustic carnival of sledding and sleighing is at hand,

"Wide swung again our ice-locked door,

And all the world was ours once more."

The poet's From the subject thus chosen and pursued, an unadventured theme before, our poet has made his masterpiece. Its readers afterward loved to hear his voice, whether at its best or otherwise; and the more so for his pleased and assured reflection,

"And thanks untraced to lips unknown

Shall greet me like the odors blown

From unseen meadows newly mown."

ANTI-SLAVERY LYRICS.

121

A claim that he has found and preserved in fit and winning verse the poetic aspect of his own section can be grounded safely on this idyl. We return from the work in which his taste is most effectual to that inspired by his life-long convictions. It is in this that the faults heretofore noted are most common, but here also his natural force is at its height, and results from what is lacking in some of his group the element of passion. The verse of his period, especially the New England verse, is barren enough of this. For what there was, and is, of love-poetry we must look south of the region where poets are either too fortunate or too self-controlled to die because a woman's fair. The song of the Quaker bard is almost virginal, in so far as what we term the master-passion is concerned. Its passion comes from the purpose that heated his The passoul and both strengthened and impeded lyrical expres-ery sion. Active service in any strife, even the most hu- heart. mane, is unrest, and therefore hostile to the perfection of art. But the conflict often engenders in its cloud the flash of eloquence and song. Three-fourths of Whittier's anti-slavery lyrics are clearly effusions of the hour; their force was temporal rather than poetic. There are music and pathos in "The Virginia Slave Mother," and "The Slave-Ships" is lurid and grotesque enough to have furnished Turner with his theme. The poet's deep-voiced scorn and invective rendered his anti-slavery verse a very different thing from Longfellow's, and made the hearer sure of his "effectual calling." Even rhetoric becomes the outburst of true passion in such lines as these upon "Elliott":

"Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play

No trick of priestcraft here!

Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay

A hand on Elliott's bier ?"

sion of a

Personal lyrics.

"Icha

bod."

A little of this, however, goes quite far enough in poetry. As a writer of personal tributes, whether pæans or monodies, the reform bard, with his peculiar faculty of characterization, has been happily gifted. Scarcely one of these that might not be retouched to advantage, but they are many and various and striking. John Randolph lives for us in the just balancing, the masterly and sympathetic portraiture, of Whittier's fine elegy. Channing, Elliott, Pius IX., Foster, Rantoul, Kossuth, Sumner, Garibaldi, — all these historic personages are idealized by this poet, and haloed with their spiritual worth; his tributes are a lyrical commentary, from the minstrel's point of view, upon an epoch now gone by. The wreath his aged hands have laid upon the tomb of Garrison is a beautiful and consecrated offering. One of his memorable improvisations was "Ichabod," the lament for Webster's defection and fall, a tragical subject handled with lyric power. In after years, his passion tempered by the flood of time, he breathes a tenderer regret in "The Lost Occasion":

But the conception of "Ichabod" is most impressive; those darkening lines were graven too deeply for obliteration. In thought we still picture the deserted leader, the shadow gathering about his "august head," while he reads such words as these :

"All else is gone; from those great eyes

The soul has fled: