JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 365 



posterity is typical of his inability to handle anything on a large 

 scale. 



To one who amid this confusion sets himself to discover the 

 characteristic traits of the work, the first salient features are not 

 its merits. Whittier was certainly precocious. Certainly, too, 

 the power he displayed in youth did not meet the common fate 

 of precocity. But the change from his earliest work to his 

 latest is surprisingly slight. At seventeen he wrote of the 

 Merrimac : 



" Oh, lovely the scene, when the gray misty vapor 



Of morning is lifted from Merrimac's shore; 

 When the firefly, lighting his wild gleaming taper, 



The dimly seen lowlands comes glimmering o'er ; 

 When on thy calm surface the moonbeam falls brightly. 



And the dull bird of night is his covert forsaking, 

 When the whippoorwiU's notes from thy margin sound lightly, 



And break on the sound which thy small waves are making." * 



At thirty -three he wrote of it again : 



" But look ! the yellow light no more . 

 Streams down on wave and verdant shore ; 

 And clearly on the calm air swells 

 The twilight voice of distant bells. 

 From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, 

 The mists come slowly rolling in ; 

 Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, 

 Amidst the sea-like vapor swim, 

 While yonder lonely coast-light, set 

 Within its wave-washed minaret, 

 Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, 

 Shines dimly through its cloudy veil! " f 



At fifty-nine he wrote of the light-house visible from Hampton 

 Beach : 



"Just then the ocean seemed 

 To lift a half-faced moon in sight ; 

 And shoreward o'er the waters gleamed, 

 From crest to crest, a line of light. 



Silently for a space each eye 



Upon that sudden glory turned: 

 Cool from the land the breeze blew by, 



The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned 



* Poetical Works, Vol. IV. p. 336. t Poetical Works, Vol. II. p. 12. 



