These lines," To Pius IX.," were written immediately after the bombardment of Rome by the allied armies of the Pon

tiff:

"Yet, scandal of the world! from thee

One needful truth mankind shall learn, -
That kings and priests to Liberty

And God are false in turn.

"Not vainly Roman hearts have bled
To feed the Crosier and the Crown,
If, roused thereby, the world shall tread
The twin-born vampires down."

The natural vehemence of Whittier's poetry has at times run into declamatory excess. This failing is discoverable principally in his earlier verses upon political and reformatory subjects, written while his judgment was still immature, and unduly influenced by his passions. Thus, upon reading the sentence of death passed on John L. Brown for assisting a female slave to escape, (which sentence was afterwards commuted,) a series of stanzas were written, the first one of which makes the following insinuations against the clergy, addressing them in this style :

"Ho! thou who seekest late and long

A license from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and hell's red wrong,
Man of the pulpit, look! —
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,

This ripe fruit of thy teachings see;
And tell us how to Heaven will rise
The incense of this sacrifice,-

This blossom of the Gallows Tree!"

The poem entitled " Clerical Oppressors" was called forth by a meeting of the citizens of Charleston, which the clergy attended in a body, and has some good round invective, equally unfair, but rather more telling than that quoted above:·

"Pilate and Herod, friends!

Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!

Just God and holy! is that church, which lends

Strength to the spoiler, Thine?"

The first stanza of "The Pine-Tree" contains an inspiring appeal, and a graphic picture of the old Roundheads in council:

"Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield,

Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's tattered field! Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England's royal missive with a firm 'THUS SAITH THE

LORD,'

Rise again for home and freedom! — set the battle in array !—
What the fathers did of old time, we their sons must do to-day."

A wider experience, and the more charitable judgment which generally accompanies increasing years, have had their effect in modifying the tone of his recent verse. Without losing any of its fire, it shows in a more chastened style and temperate spirit marks of a greater culture and a more Christian forbearance. The exquisite sonnet, "Forgiveness," is an index of this change of feeling: —

"My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath-day, I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level, and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of one common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

Swept all my pride away, and, trembling, I forgave."

A poem bearing the name of " Ichabod," provoked by the supposed recreancy of a great statesman, under circumstances which would have once called forth all the denunciation of which the author was capable, is an impressive example of the same kind.

We forbear to quote, in further exemplification of our remarks, the impressive "Lines suggested by a Visit to Washington," and "What the Voice said," in order to make room for two specimens which will bring into striking contrast his

earlier and his later views. The first is from "Stanzas for the Times" of 1836, when an anti-Abolition meeting was held in Faneuil Hall.

"Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought

Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?

Shall Honor bleed?-shall Truth succumb?

The second is from "Stanzas for the Times" of 1850, the date of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.

"Not mine sedition's trumpet-blast

And threatening word;

I read the lesson of the Past,

That firm endurance wins at last

More than the sword."

The Quakerism in which Whittier was reared, and which he has always professed, stands, as we have already said, in strange conflict with the belligerent tone of many of his writings. We should hardly have expected so rude and martial a strain from the quiet, drab-coated professor of the mild tenets of his sect. Perhaps his tone is more in accordance with the spirit of the early founders of the denomination, than the comparatively uninteresting dulness of the modern type. Of late years, the Quakers have lost their desire for propagandism, and have become more accommodating and worldly-wise. But in early times, no sect had so zealous and wide-awake champions as the Society of Friends. George Fox, James Nayler, and even William Penn, show that their Quakerism had not wholly subdued their combative tendencies. The admirers of Whittier need not regret that he is not formed upon the more modern and respectable pattern.

We are naturally led, from the consideration of our author's Quakerism, to that strong religious fervor which is manifested in every part of his writings. So deeply rooted is it, and apparently so blended with his imaginative powers, that, in some of his productions, one can hardly tell which predominates. His religious views embrace a simple faith in the Quaker doc

trine of the inward light, combined with an intense apprehension of the brotherhood of man. In order to show his devotional spirit, we quote the concluding stanza of " The Quaker of the Olden Time."

"O, spirit of that early day,

So pure and strong and true!
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,

The cross of Truth to bear,

And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer!"

The poems entitled "Follen," "Questions of Life,” “My Soul and I," and others of a similar kind, are exquisite in their delicacy of thought and expression, and show a wrestling with some of the gravest and most perplexing questions that come under the consideration of meditative minds.

Whittier rarely writes without being so impressed with some strong feeling, that he cannot fail to awaken a corresponding emotion in his reader. Of this, his verses written in memory of his friends bear witness. We would refer emphatically to the "Lines to a Friend on the Death of his Sister," and to the perfect poem entitled "Gone." For the same reason, he writes with such energy, as not to give himself much concern about the customary ornaments of poetical diction. His imagery, when he introduces it, comes without an effort, as the natural accompaniment of his verse, never obtruding itself on the reader's attention, or seeming other than an essential part of the whole.

In the fine ballad of "Cassandra Southwick," (a young wo man of Puritan times, who for non-conformity narrowly escaped being sold into slavery at Barbadoes,) he has happily described that transfiguration which nature seems to undergo in the eyes of one under the influence of some sudden and overpowering emotion. Immediately on leaving her prisoncell Cassandra exclaims:

"Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye,
A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky,
A lovelier light on rock and hill, and stream and woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay."

One peculiarity of Whittier's imagery is, that so much of it is drawn from the Bible. This book is so the common property of Christendom, that to resort to it for purposes of poetical illustration is as justifiable as to resort to the book of Nature. He shows a very great familiarity with every part of holy writ, and an exceeding aptness in its citation. Of a brother reformer and poet he speaks as

"Like Nehemiah, fighting as he wrought."

The conjunction of the clergy and laity against the Abolition agitation he characterizes as

"Pilate and Herod friends!"

So the North complains to the South of supposed injustice and oppression:

In "Margaret Smith's Journal" he says: "We also found grapes both white and purple hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old plucked at Eschol." His graphic description will recall to every one the picture in the old family Bible of the two Israelites staggering under the weight of an enormous bunch of grapes. Other and perhaps better instances might be readily selected.

The free and dexterous use of proper names is another characteristic of our poet. With an affluence of these his extensive knowledge supplies him, and he displays uncommon skill in weaving them harmoniously into his verse. Even the long sesquipedalian Indian words present no insuperable difficulties. There is something strangely impressive in the effect of the introduction of a melodious or sonorous name, particularly if it indicates a place of which we have no personal knowledge. The imagination is touched in that vague and mysterious way in which it delights, and the burden is put upon the reader of supplying the requisite beauty or sublimity to fill out the supposed conception of the author. In this art Milton is the great master, and he had his originals in the epic NO. 164.

VOL. LXXIX.

5