806 



WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. 



Let us kneel : 



God's own voice is in that peal, 

 And this spot is holy ground. 



Lord, forgive us ! What are we, 



That our eyes this glory see, 

 That our ears have heard the sound ? 



In regard to the way of dealing with the 

 questions that arose after the war, he wrote, in a 

 poem entitled " To the Thirty-ninth Congress ": 



Enough of blood the land has seen, 

 And not by cell or gallows-stair 

 Shall ye the way of God prepare. 



Say to the pardon-seekers, Keep 

 Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees, 

 Nor palter with unworthy pleas. 



Above your voices sounds the wail 

 Of starving men ; we shut in vain 

 Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. 



What words can drown that bitter cry ? 

 What tears wash out that stain of death ? 

 What oaths confirm your broken faith ? 



From you alone the guaranty 

 Of union, freedom, peace, we claim ; 

 We urge no conqueror's terms of shame. 



Make all men peers before the law, 



Take hands from off the negro's throat, 

 Give black and white an equal vote. 



Keep all your forfeit lives and lands, 

 But give the common law's redress 

 To labor's utter nakedness. 



Revive the old heroic will ; 

 Be in the right as brave and strong 

 As ye have "proved yourselves in wrong. 



Defeat shall then be victory, 



Your loss the wealth of full amends, 

 And hate be love, and foes be friends. 



The poet was once more at liberty to return to 

 more congenial themes, and the chastening of 

 his nature showed itself in a succession of fine 

 devotional poems. One of the most character- 

 istic of these is " The Eternal Goodness." 



I see the wrong that round me lies, 



I feel the guilt within ; 

 I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 



The world confess its sin. 



Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 

 And tossed by storm and flood, 



To one fixed stake my spirit clings ; 

 I know that God is good ! 



Not mine to look where cherubim 



And seraphs may not see, 

 But nothing can be good in Him 



Which evil is in me. 



The wrong that pains my sou< below 



I dare not throne above : 

 I know not of His hate, I know 



His goodness and His love. 



I know not where His islands lift 



Their fronded palms in air; 

 I only know I cannot drift 



Beyond His love and care. 



In 1866 appeared " Snow-Bound," the fame of 

 which was a continual surprise to its author. A 

 year later he published "The Tent on the Beach," 

 in which were woven several short poems. The 



tenters were James T. Fields, Bayard Taylor, and 

 Whittier himself, who is thus described in it : 



And one there was, a dreamer born, 



Who, with a mission to fulfil, 

 Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 



The crank of an opinion-mill, 

 Making his rustic reed of song 

 A weapon in the war with wrong, 

 Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough 

 That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring 

 and grow. 



Too quiet seemed the man to ride 

 The winged Hippogriff Reform ; 

 Was his a voice from side to side 



To pierce the tumult of the storm ? 

 A silent, shy, peace-loving man, 

 He seemed no fiery partisan 

 To hold his way against the public frown, 

 The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's 

 hounding down. 



For while he wrought with strenuous will 



The work his haiids had found to do, 

 He heard the fitful music still 



Of winds that out of dream-land blow. 

 The din about him could not drown 

 What the strange voices whispered down ; 

 Along his task-field weird processions swept, 

 The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 



Pew events of public significance were allowed 

 by Whittier to pass without the comment of his 

 muse. "Freedom in Brazil," "Howard at 

 Atlanta," "Garibaldi," "Centennial Hymn," 

 and " The Emancipation Group," are among 

 these. One of the most characteristic of his 

 poems contains the same sort of protest against 

 publicity that Browning, Tennyson, and Lowell 

 had each expressed. It was written in 1870 : 



O living friends who love me, 



dear ones gone above me, 

 Careless of other fame, 



1 leave to you my ixame. 



Hide it from idle praises, 



Save it from evil phrases : 



Why, when dear lips that spake it 



Are dumb, should strangers wake it ? 



Let the thick curtain fall ; 

 I better know than all 

 How little I have gained, 

 How vast the uuattained. 



Not by the page word-painted 

 Let life be banned or sainted : 

 Deeper than written scroll 

 The colors of the soul. 



Sweeter than any sung 



My songs that found no tongue ; 



Nobler than any fact 



My wish that failed of act. 



The poem "At Last," which has been re- 

 printed since Whittier's death, in connection 

 with final words from Browning and Tennyson, 

 was written ten years ago. One of the really 

 latest, " A Legacy," has a still higher theme : 



Friend of my many years ! 

 When the great silence falls, at last, on me, 

 Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee, 



A memory of tears, 



But pleasant thoughts alone, 

 Of one who was thy friendship's honored guest 

 And drank the wine of consolation pressed 



From sorrows of my own. . 



