370 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



" Snow-Bound " notable. Take this reference to those that are 

 no more: 



" We turn the pages that they read, 

 Their written words we linger o'er, 

 But in the sun they cast no shade, 

 No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

 No step is on the conscious floor! " 



Or again, take this couplet about the maiden aunt, so familiar a 

 figure in New England households : 



" All unprofaned she held apart 

 The virgin fancies of the heart." 



Or again, these lines for once imaginative : 



" How many a poor one's blessing went 

 With thee beneath the low green tent 

 Whose curtain never outward swings ! " 



Or again : 



" But still I wait with ear and eye 

 For something gone which should be nigh, 

 A loss in all familiar things, 

 In flower that blooms, and bird that sings." 



Or again still : 



" And while in life's late afternoon, 



When cool and long the shadows grow, 

 I walk to meet the night that soon 



Shall shape and shadoiv overflow, 

 I cannot feel that thou art far." 



It was from such memories as these, thus remembered, that 

 he went to his work in the world. And the very first poem in 

 his class of "Subjective and Reminiscent" suggests, what rarely 

 appears in his writing, that he had tender memories of a less 

 domestic nature. For these verses, addressed at the age of 

 twenty-three to a lady of Calvinistic tendencies, from whom he 

 seems to have been long parted, contain this passage : 



" Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 

 My picture of thy youth to see, 

 When, half a woman, half a child, 

 Thy very artlessness beguiled, 

 And folly's self seemed wise in thee." * 



* " Memories," Poetical Works, Vol. II. p. 96. ' 



