who have seen many days and who are preparing to say farewell to life and are all brave and optimistic.

14. Hesperides. See note to 57: 14.

20. Atlantis was the lost continent which was supposed to have been situated between the Canary Islands and the West Indies. The word is here used to typify the vanished land of youth.

Remembering that the poem is an allegory, explain carefully the underlying thought of the last stanza.

Give some reasons for the popularity of Longfellow's poetry. Can you draw from his work any conclusions as to his personality?

To what extent can you trace in the poems you have read the influence of books? Does Longfellow seem to you to owe more to study and training, or to natural ability?

Critics have spoken of the simplicity of Longfellow's style and thought. Wherein would such a quality be of advantage? In what conditions would it prove a drawback?

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

- 1892, Hampton Falls, N. H.

East Haverhill, Mass., 1807 Whittier came of Quaker stock; his family was in poor circumstances and he was brought up as a real "barefoot boy on a New England farm, with but slight opportunities for education. To the natural influences of such an environment we may trace the general characteristics of his poetry. It showed, as he himself said, an earnest sense of human right and wrong," and was conditioned to an appreciable degree by what he termed The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear.

But it manifested also a love of nature that was deep and true, and a kindly intimacy with lowly life.

He was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and had a scant training at district schools, interrupted by calls to work on the farm. In his boyhood he happened to come upon a volume of the poems of Robert Burns, which stimulated his imagination

and turned him towards the writing of verse.

One of his numer

ous early poems was sent by his sister to the Newburyport Free Press, was accepted and published, and the youthful author first saw his name in print when the postman handed him the paper as he was working in the fields with his father. The editor of the newspaper, William Lloyd Garrison, was struck by the promise of the writer and took him into his own family. Whittier thus was able to attend Haverhill Academy for two terms, supporting himself by making and selling slippers homely art which he had learned from a farmhand.

a

Before he was twenty-one he had written for various country newspapers, and at the age of twenty-three he became editor of the Haverhill Gazette. A little later he went to the New England Weekly Review, in Hartford, Connecticut, but was forced through ill-health to give up his work and return to Haverhill. He took an active part in the politics of his native town until broader issues engaged his attention, and he identified himself with the movement against slavery. In this behalf he wrote constantly; sacrificing much, content from a stern sense of duty to "shun delights and live laborious days." For a time he was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, an abolitionist journal published in Philadelphia. In 1840 he moved to Amesbury, Massachusetts, and here he chiefly resided during the rest of his life. Once the war was over, his career was quiet and uneventful; he devoted himself chiefly to literature. A somewhat retiring disposition unfitted him for a wide popularity, but the simple serenity of his life and the gentle kindliness of his manner greatly endeared him to those who knew him.

Though he did not produce a large body of work, he wrote steadily during a literary career which extended over sixtyfive years. His poems were never very long; there were few of them, it has been remarked, which might not have been produced at a single sitting. Of his prose it need only be said that, written as it was in the heat of controversy, it fails of those qualities which would make it endure. The same holds true of his antislavery verse though we occasionally find a stir and a fire which lifts it above the merely temporary.

His best work is undoubtedly seen in his pictures of nature and in his unpretentious descriptions of lowly life. His most notable piece of work is Snow-bound, as regards both the fine simplicity of its phrasing and the excellent truthfulness of its descriptions; Whittier was writing, indeed, about the things which lay closest to his heart. Another poem which contains passages of unobtrusive beauty and truth is The Tent On the Beach, wherein summer scenes on the New England coast are treated with the same careful fidelity as the winter views of Snow-bound.

The ballads, of which he wrote many and which he constructed for the most part in masterly fashion, will probably always remain the most popular section of his poetical work. They possess the typically simple and straightforward appeal of the ballad form and occasionally, as in Skipper Ireson's Ride and The Pipes at Lucknow, show dramatic quality. Whittier will live as the most characteristic poet of New England, not only because of the subjects which were chosen for his verse, but also through a certain stark, reticent, honest, and self-sufficient quality in the man himself.

69. In Schooldays. Simplicity of tone and a note of real pathos characterize this pretty little ballad.

What is gained by placing the scene "long years ago"?

70. The Barefoot Boy. The author writes from personal experience. He looks back upon his own boyhood and interprets the feelings of the average, normal boy in a way which has gained for the poem a wide popularity.

71, 6. republican. The boy is as "happy as a prince"; the grown man is no happier than anybody else.

72, 28. Apples of Hesperides. See note to 57: 14.

74, 2. moil. Hard work, drudgery.

Is boyhood really happier than manhood? What should you say after reading this poem?

74. Maud Muller. A critic has complained that the New England judge here plays the part of a knight errant. This may be true; but the ballad none the less retains a perennial freshness.

78, 5. wheel. Spinning-wheel.

spinet.

An early type of piano.

6. astral. A handsome lamp.

What is gained by arranging the poem in couplets?

79. Skipper Ireson's Ride. Here we have rapidity of movement, and a certain touch of the dramatic in the changed phrasing of the last verse poor Floyd Ireson."

4. Apuleius's Golden Ass. Apuleius, a Roman writer who lived about 125 A.D., wrote a fantastic satirical romance called The Golden Ass.

5. one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass. A story in The Arabian Nights tells of a prince who disguised himself as a oneeyed dervish and rode through the air on a winged horse.

7. Islam's prophet on Al-Borak. Islam's prophet is Mahomet. He is said to have made some miraculous journeys on a wonderful horse named Al-Borak "the lightning."

The term here

80, 3. Maenads. Women who worshipped Bacchus, god of wine, and indulged in all sorts of excess. means women wrought up to a pitch of frenzy.

8. Chaleur Bay. On the north of the Province of New Brunswick.

Was Floyd Ireson sufficiently punished?

82. Snow-bound. The selections given, comprising about half the poem, are those which best show Whittier's powers of description and his keen observation of simple rural life. The poem was written when he was fifty-seven years old, and recalls tender memories of his youth. It possesses special value as a transcription of the country life of a day long gone by. It has a "universal quality, which makes it a reflection of the thought and feeling not only of Whittier, but of every man who has sat and mused alone before an open fire."

27. homespun stuff. Cloth spun at home by the women of the family.

83, 5. heard the roar. The Whittier farm was far from the sea, yet with certain weather conditions the surf could be plainly heard.

84, 25. Pisa's leaning miracle. The "leaning tower" of

Pisa was built in 1350. It is 180 feet high and 24 feet off the perpendicular.

85, 1. buskins. Heavy foot-wear, reaching halfway to the knee.

8. Aladdin's wondrous cave. An allusion to the story in The Arabian Nights.

20. Amun.

sented as a ram.

The Egyptian god Ammon was often repre

How does Whittier gain clearness of effect? What are your own impressions of a winter storm? How do they differ from what the poet has recorded? Are you more interested in this poem as a description of a tempest, or as a picture of old-time country life?

88. Telling the Bees. "A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary in order to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home." - Whittier's note. The scene described is that of the Whittier homestead. This poem was highly praised by Lowell and in its gentle pathos is worthy of such praise.

How is the tragedy of the poem suggested before we actually know what happened?

91. The Eternal Goodness. A beautiful confession of personal faith.

What are the points of difference in the faith of Whittier and that of his friends?

What thoughts are of individual, and what of general, application?

Two other " confessions," of great literary beauty, though of widely different conclusions, may be read in Tennyson's lines from In Memoriam beginning "O, yet we trust that somehow good," (Section LIV) and in Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. Speaking of his own poetry, Whittier said:

No mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies.