“And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day,”
sang the poet when through time and trial somewhat of the rest of
eternity had come to him and in the beginning of age--that youth of
immortality--he could say:
“... all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm.”
With all the elements so mixed in him--pride, power, ambition,
indignation against wrong, intense love of liberty, keenness in
character-reading, political acumen, delight in beauty, with humor
illuminating all it lighted upon--and not inclined to overlook
anything--we find in many-sided Whittier nothing more strongly marked
than praise of all things good, which flows inevitably into worship of
the Giver. For simplicity is not at all one idea; it is one purpose.
* * * * *
“I am a Quaker because my family before me--those whom I loved--were
Quakers,” he said one day to his guest who had accompanied him to the
Friends’ meeting and on returning sat in the garden room listening
to his comments. “And also I am one because the faith pleases me,” he
continued. “I believe in it.”
In the May of 1886, only six years before his death, the poet wrote:
“I hope thee are able to enjoy this beautiful springtime better than
I can. I have been laid up with a cold for the last fortnight, and I
have reached an age when I cannot afford to take cold at all. I hope to
be able to go to Amesbury in season for Quarterly Meeting which I have
never missed.”
He had never missed the Quarterly Meeting of the Friends--he at almost
forescore and having always been so delicate in health!
* * * * *
It was wonderful that Whittier with his delicate health, his many
illnesses, his extreme sensitiveness, even to the winds of heaven when
they did not blow from the right quarter, should have fought through
and helped to win a great battle for the freedom of millions of human
beings.
Still more wonderful was it that he should have lived for almost a
generation after this was won, to enjoy the fruits of his victory and
of his genius. In 1883 he said in a letter:
“Many years ago a Boston doctor of eminence told me that I had disease
of the heart. But if that had been so, I should not have been alive
now.”
* * * * *
More than the absence of positive disease, however, upheld his
strength. It was that constant renewal of vital force which comes
from living in the Spirit, united with that same wise judgment in the
management of his frail body that marked his course in all matters.
He voices this renewal of vitality when in “Our Master,” he says:
“We touch him in life’s throng and press,
And we are whole again.”
They who have seen Whittier suddenly arrested in speech and action
stand motionless with bent head and listening soul, and then for a
moment uplift his face, his eyes glowing with inspiration, as if his
own soul were sending back a message to the skies, can never doubt that
there were moments when in the language of the prophets whom he loved,
“an angel spake to him.”
Or was it that the heart of the Father Himself--the “Over-Heart,” as
the poet has it--called to his heart?
Later, the poet would speak the message he had received. But the
fullness, the joy of it no man could utter--unless he spoke in the
tongue of Heaven.
* * * * *
It was in the garden room where the eyes of one who sat by in
reverence had seen this bowed head, this look listening and rapt, this
flashing upward glance responsive with joy and power, that the poet
sat discoursing of many things of life and thought. In speaking of a
creed--belief in the hard and fast-bound fate of all who did not reach
what human beings considered the standard of faith--he said:
“If people really believed all the things that they think they believe
concerning God and the future judgment of the lost, there would be no
more smiling in the world.”
Yet no one could be farther from underestimating the danger of
slighting human responsibility than was Whittier. His oft-repeated
saying, “The Lord will do the best He can for us,” to Whittier always
carried with it the certainty that God would respect man’s choice.
It was linked with the poet’s assertions, “It’s better not to risk
behaving in this world as if there were no other,” and, “We ought to do
the best we can in this world.”
The intensity of this conviction he utters in his “Tent on the
Beach,” where he speaks of taking in the crowded sail and letting his
conscience steer--the conscience, not of a bigot, but of a saint.
* * * * *
Poet, philanthropist, saint, as he was--and not scientist--no man comes
closer to that supreme science which is perception of the highest
truths. That the love of the Father is unalterable, and the free
choice of man inalienable, brings to his mind all the possibilities of
endless sinning and suffering, side by side with the mercy that endures
forever. In its vivid portrayal of Divine love rejected, his poem, “The
Answer,” is one of the most remarkable religious poems of the language.
In it he sings:
“No force divine can love compel.
“No word of doom may shut thee out,
No wind of wrath may downward whirl,
No swords of fire keep watch about
The open gates of pearl;
“A tenderer light than moon or sun,
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn,
May shine and sound forever on,
And thou be deaf and dim.
“For ever round the Mercy-seat
The guiding lights of Love shall burn;
But what if, habit-bound, thy feet
Shall lack the will to turn?”
* * * * *
In such mood one day in the garden room the talk led up to the story of
Lazarus and Dives, to the selfish luxury in which the latter had lived,
his hard-heartedness, his terrible punishment, and in Hades his cry for
mercy, if not for himself, yet for his brothers. After uttering many
things of deepest interest, the poet sat silent with head bent and eyes
upon the flower flame which he loved so well, and which in some way
seemed to inspire him. Suddenly, he turned upon his hearer, his eyes
kindled into splendor by the glow of his thought which flashed upon him
and burst into instant speech.
“He would not stay there long,” he said of Dives; “he had begun to
think of his brothers!”
* * * * *
Two visitors came to the poet’s house one day and while waiting for him
to appear, one of them picked up the poem, “The Eternal Goodness,” then
just published, and reading it aloud remarked, “Whittier could not have
written that thirty years ago.”
It was true. As Whittier’s feet had climbed the steeps of
self-sacrifice, the horizon of the Eternal had ever widened before his
eyes. Many men has he trained in faith and leadership.
For while men’s minds struggled with questions as to the mind and
methods of God, Whittier from the Spirit within him sang of the heart
of God. Neither mete nor bound of creed could hold him whose communion
was with the Spirit itself. His last message--“Love to all the world,”
was the seal of those years of spiritual communion with Him who came to
save the world.
In recalling those inspired poems, “The Eternal Goodness,” and “Our
Master,” the remark he made one day to the writer becomes of especial
interest.
“I asked Emerson,” said Whittier, as he sat talking beside the
flower-filled hearth in the garden room, “doesn’t thee believe that
Christ was more than other men--than mere human?” “Yes,” Emerson
answered. “Then I said to him,” continued Whittier, “If thee does, thee
ought to confess it in thy writings.”
“His eye was beauty’s powerless slave,”
Whittier most truly sings of himself.
For never a fair and beautiful thing of earth in his pathway was unseen
by him; and never one did he pass by, save at the command which led
him to higher beauty. No indifference or coldness, no lack of fervor
or of sympathy marred his high nature. His poems are full of belief
in the immanence of the Spirit that to him was no vague and distant
Effulgence, but a present Companion.
This vision of Reality through the mists which clothe the seeming
real was so vivid that to him every mountain was a possible Mount of
Transfiguration needing but the revelation of the One always present to
show forth its splendor.
* * * * *
Whittier is inspirer in patriotism, in honor, in holiness; comforter
in distress and sorrow. To those who believe in the sacredness of a
righteous cause, who hold their country’s honor high; to those who
would listen to the voice of Nature in her true and deepest moods; to
those who love
“All sweet accords of hearts and homes;”
--and more--to those who mourn their dead, or who sorrow over sins and
seek the promise of the Father’s love--to all these when life’s strain
is greatest Whittier declares that Reality which the soul craves.
In the sins, distresses, and sorrows overwhelming the world today,
Whittier’s life and work stand forth filled with the strength builded
upon Eternity. With inspiration he sings to the word:
“All which is real now remaineth,
And fadeth never;
The Hand which upholds it now sustaineth
The soul forever.”