366 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



Its waves to foam ; on either hand 



Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand; 

 With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree, 

 The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea." * 



And as he dealt with Nature here, for above forty years sim- 

 ply looking and telling just what he saw, so he dealt with 

 everything from beginning to end. For sixty-seven years his 

 work retains its chief characteristics, with remarkably slight 

 alteration. 



The most salient of these characteristics, as I have said, are 

 not the merits. The lines I have cited have an obvious air of 

 commonplace. It is deceptive. As one grows to know them, 

 and the hundreds of others for which I must let them stand, one 

 begins insensibly to realize that the power of selective observa- 

 tion which underlies them is of no common order. But common- 

 place they merely look, and commonplace beyond all doubt are 

 endless passages throughout Whittier's verse. The man lacked 

 the saving grace of humor. In all the seven volumes I have 

 found but one passage that really amused me. This is an 

 account in " Yankee Gypsies " t of how a drunken vagabond 

 broke into the Whittier homestead while the men were away, 

 and made formal love to the dismayed grandmother who was 

 born Greenleaf. In Whittier's verse, this lack of humor is 

 sometimes startling. In a poem t where a Yankee stage-driver 

 describes the profoundly gracious merits of a passenger, who 

 once made him stop while she sketched a panoramic view, occurs 

 this stanza: 



" ' As good as fair ; it seemed her joy 



To comfort and to give ; 

 My poor, sick wife and cripple boy 



Will bless her while they live ! ' 

 The tremor in the driver's tone 



His manhood did not shame: 

 ' I dare say, sir, you may have known — ' 



He named a well-known name." 



And in a poem § commemorating a railway conductor who lost 

 his life in an accident come these passages : 



* Poetical Works, Vol. IV. p. 281. 



t Prose Works, Vol. I. p. 339. 



} " The Hill-Top," Poetical Works, Vol. IV. p. 58. 



§ "Conductor Bradley," Poetical Works, Vol. I. p. 359. 



