Chapter John Greenleaf Whittier of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

The fine artistic taste of Longfellow Whittier lacked, as he lacked the culture of broad reading and of travel; but he possessed the genuine love of nature and humanity; he had the virility of a strong character, free from all artificiality, the ardor of the truest patriotism, and, at the outset of his career, the inestimable advantage of consecration to an uplifting cause.

Suggestions for Reading.

The student will read, of course, the more noted of the Anti-Slavery Poems, including those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. The Shoemakers and The Huskers will serve as good examples of The Songs of Labor. The group of Personal Poems contains Ichabod and The Lost Occasion, the two impressive compositions based upon the career of Daniel Webster, and also noteworthy tributes to his friends and associates, Garrison and Sumner. Here, likewise, are interesting verses inscribed to fellow poets: Bryant, Halleck, Bayard Taylor, Longfellow (The Poet and the Children), Lowell, and Holmes; most happy of all, the poem entitled Burns. Among the Narrative and Legendary Poems are some of the most familiar of Whittier's compositions: The Vaudois Teacher, Barclay of Ury (one of several which deal with Quaker themes), The Angels of Buena Vista, Maud Muller, Skipper Ireson's Ride, Telling the Bees, My Playmate, and Among the Hills. The Poems of Nature deserve some study in detail, and should be compared with those of Longfellow and Bryant. Here we find descriptive passages of simple yet compelling beauty. Such is this stanza from Sunset on the Bearcamp:--

"Touched by a light that hath no name,
   A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
   Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
   No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
   Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
   Of all its elms is twirled:
The silence of eternity
   Seems falling on the world."

The following afford good illustrations of the poet's descriptive power: April, Summer by the Lakeside, The Last Walk in Autumn, The River Path, and The Trailing Arbutus. It will be quickly noted that Whittier is always the subjective, the reflective poet; that, like Bryant, he reads a lesson in the scene. Thus, when wandering in the dusk of twilight along the river path, he comes upon a sudden opening in the hills through whose green gates streams the "long, slant splendor" of the setting sun, bridging "the shaded stream with gold," he thinks of the river of death -- "the river dark"; and prays:--

"So let the hills of doubt divide,
So bridge with faith the sunless tide!"¹

And when, under dead boughs, amid dry leaves and moss, he finds the perfumed arbutus, he says:--

"As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
   Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day,
   And make the sad earth happier for their bloom."²

Of the Religious Poems, one stands forth preëminent; no other American poem has ever touched with its message of trustfulness the hearts of devout Christians more universally than The Eternal Goodness,--

"I know not where His islands lift
   Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
   Beyond His love and care."

The poem Our Master is also full of the deep religious feeling so characteristic of the Quaker poet, and from its stanzas have been arranged five of Whittier's best-known hymns.

Special attention should be given to a few of the poems classified as Subjective and Reminiscent. Here we find The Barefoot Boy, In School-Days, and Memories, poems which, besides affording intimate glimpses of the poet's child-life, are to be recognized as among his best compositions. To these must finally be added Snow-Bound, most intimately personal of all his works, and yet artistically his masterpiece. The more this little "classic" is read, the more its reader is impressed with its simple strength and beauty. The apt phrasing, the vivid portraiture, the happy touch of "local coloring," the easy movement of its simple