hundreds of poems which he never permitted to be collected in any
edition of his works; and not only so, but he preserved no copies of
them, in later years destroying such as came to his notice. Some of
these verses went the rounds of the newspaper press of the country,
giving him a widespread reputation as a poet. But in much of his early
work we see traces of ambition for fame, and a feeling that the world
was treating him harshly. When the change came over his spirit to which
reference has been made in a preceding chapter, sweetening all the
springs of life, he lost interest in these early productions, some of
which were giving him the fame that in his earlier years he so much
craved. It was this radical change which no doubt influenced him in his
later life to omit from his collected works most of the verses written
previous to it. I have in my possession more than three hundred poems
which I have found in the files of old newspapers, the great mass of
which I would by no means reproduce, although I find nothing of which a
young writer of that period need be ashamed. A few of these verses are
given below as specimens of the work he saw fit to discard.
The following poem, written when he was nineteen years of age, during
his first term in the Haverhill Academy, shows in one or two stanzas
the feeling that the world is giving him the cold shoulder:--
I WOULD NOT LOSE THAT ROMANCE WILD
I would not lose that romance wild,
That high and gifted feeling--
The power that made me fancy's child,
The clime of song revealing,
For all the power, for all the gold,
That slaves to pride and avarice hold.
I know that there are those who deem
But lightly of the lyre;--
Who ne'er have felt one blissful beam
Of song-enkindled fire
Steal o'er their spirits, as the light
Of morning o'er the face of night.
Yet there 's a mystery in song--
A halo round the way
Of him who seeks the muses' throng--
An intellectual ray,
A source of pure, unfading joy--
A dream that earth can ne'er destroy.
And though the critic's scornful eye
Condemn his faltering lay,
And though with heartless apathy,
The cold world turn away--
And envy strive with secret aim,
To blast and dim his rising fame;
Yet fresh, amid the blast that brings
Such poison on its breath,
Above the wreck of meaner things,
His lyre's unfading wreath
Shall bloom, when those who scorned his lay
With name and power have passed away.
Come then, my lyre, although there be
No witchery in thy tone;
And though the lofty harmony
Which other bards have known,
Is not, and cannot e'er be mine,
To touch with power those chords of thine.
Yet thou canst tell, in humble strain,
The feelings of a heart,
Which, though not proud, would still disdain
To bear a meaner part,
Than that of bending at the shrine
Where their bright wreaths the muses twine.
Thou canst not give me wealth or fame;
Thou hast no power to shed
The halo of a deathless name
Around my last cold bed;
To other chords than thine belong
The breathings of immortal song.
Yet come, my lyre! some hearts may beat
Responsive to thy lay;
The tide of sympathy may meet
Thy master's lonely way;
And kindred souls from envy free
May listen to its minstrelsy.
8th month, 1827.
During the first months of Whittier's editorship of the "New England
Review" at Hartford, his contributions of verse to that paper were
numerous--in some cases three of his poems appearing in a single
number, as in the issue of October 18, 1830. Two of these are signed
with his initials, but the one here given has no signature. That it is
his is made evident by the fact that all but one stanza of it appears
in "Moll Pitcher," published two years later. It was probably because
of the self-assertion of the concluding lines that the omitted stanza
was canceled, and these lines reveal the ambition then stirring his
young blood.
NEW ENGLAND
Land of the forest and the rock--
Of dark blue lake and mighty river--
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storm's career--the lightning's shock,--
My own green land forever!--
Land of the beautiful and brave--
The freeman's home--the martyr's grave--
The nursery of giant men,
Whose deeds have linked with every glen,
And every hill and every stream,
The romance of some warrior dream!--
Oh never may a son of thine,
Where'er his wandering steps incline,
Forget the sky which bent above
His childhood like a dream of love--
The stream beneath the green hill flowing--
The broad-armed trees above it growing--
The clear breeze through the foliage blowing;--
Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn
Breathed o'er the brave New England born;--
Or mark the stranger's Jaguar hand
Disturb the ashes of thy dead--
The buried glory of a land
Whose soil with noble blood is red,
And sanctified in every part,
Nor feel resentment like a brand
Unsheathing from his fiery heart!
Oh--greener hills may catch the sun
Beneath the glorious heaven of France;
And streams rejoicing as they run
Like life beneath the day-beam's glance,
May wander where the orange bough
With golden fruit is bending low;--
And there may bend a brighter sky
O'er green and classic Italy--
And pillared fane and ancient grave
Bear record of another time,
And over shaft and architrave
The green luxuriant ivy climb;--
And far towards the rising sun
The palm may shake its leaves on high,
Where flowers are opening one by one,
Like stars upon the twilight sky,
And breezes soft as sighs of love
Above the rich mimosa stray,
And through the Brahmin's sacred grove
A thousand bright-hued pinions play!--
Yet, unto thee, New England, still
Thy wandering sons shall stretch their arms,
And thy rude chart of rock and hill
Seem dearer than the land of palms!
Thy massy oak and mountain pine
More welcome than the banyan's shade,
And every free, blue stream of thine
Seem richer than the golden bed
Of Oriental waves, which glow
And sparkle with the wealth below!
Land of my fathers!--if my name,
Now humble, and unwed to fame,
Hereafter burn upon the lip,
As one of those which may not die,
Linked in eternal fellowship
With visions pure and strong and high--
If the wild dreams which quicken now
The throbbing pulse of heart and brow,
Hereafter take a real form
Like spectres changed to beings warm;
And over temples worn and gray
The star-like crown of glory shine,--
Thine be the bard's undying lay,
The murmur of his praise be thine!
One of the poems in the same number which contained this spirited
tribute to New England was the song given below, which was signed with
the initials of the editor, else there might be some hesitation in
assigning it to him, for there is scarcely anything like it to be found
in his writings. It was evidently written for music, and some composer
should undertake it.
SONG
That vow of thine was full and deep
As man has ever spoken--
A vow within the heart to keep,
Unchangeable, unbroken.
'T was by the glory of the Sun,
And by the light of Even,
And by the Stars, that, one by one,
Are lighted up in Heaven!
That Even might forget its gold--
And Sunlight fade forever--
The constant Stars grow dim and cold,--
But thy affection--never!
And Earth might wear a changeful sign,
And fickleness the Sky--
Yet, even then, that love of thine
Might never change nor die.
The golden Sun is shining yet--
And at the fall of Even
There 's beauty in the warm Sunset,
And Stars are bright in Heaven.
No change is on the blessed Sky--
The quiet Earth has none--
Nature has still her constancy,
And _Thou_ art changed alone!
The "Review" for September 13, 1830, has a poem of Whittier's prefaced
by a curious story about Lord Byron:--
_The Spectre._--There is a story going the rounds of our periodicals
that a Miss G., of respectable family, young and very beautiful,
attended Lord Byron for nearly a year in the habit of a page. Love,
desperate and all-engrossing, seems to have been the cause of her
singular conduct. Neglected at last by the man for whom she had
forsaken all that woman holds dear, she resolved upon self-destruction,
and provided herself with poison. Her designs were discovered by Lord
Byron, who changed the poison for a sleeping potion. Miss G., with that
delicate feeling of affection which had ever distinguished her
intercourse with Byron, stole privately away to the funeral vault of
the Byrons, and fastened the entrance, resolving to spare her lover
the dreadful knowledge of her fate. She there swallowed the supposed
poison--and probably died of starvation! She was found dead soon after.
Lord Byron never adverted to this subject without a thrill of horror.
The following from his private journal may, perhaps, have some
connection with it:--
"I awoke from a dream--well! and have not others dreamed?--such a
dream! I wish the dead would rest forever. Ugh! how my blood
chilled--and I could not wake--and--and--
"Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than could the substance of ten thousand--
Armed all in proof--
"I do not like this dream--I hate its foregone conclusion. And am I to
be shaken by shadows? Ay, when they remind us of--no matter--but if I
dream again I will try whether all sleep has the like
visions."--Moore's "Byron," page 324.
She came to me last night--
The floor gave back no tread,
She stood by me in the wan moonlight--
In the white robes of the dead--
Pale--pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me--
I heard no sound--I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death;
Its dark eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something which told of other days--
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if Love's smile were frozen there,
Came o'er me with an icy thrill--
O God! I feel its presence still!
And fearfully and dimly
The pale cold vision passed,
Yet those dark eyes were fixed on me
In sadness to the last.
I struggled--and my breath came back,
As to the victim on the rack,
Amid the pause of mortal pain
Life steals to suffer once again!
Was it a dream? I looked around,
The moonlight through the lattice shone;
The same pale glow that dimly crowned
The forehead of the spectral one!
And then I knew she had been there--
Not in her breathing loveliness,
But as the grave's lone sleepers are,
Silent and cold and passionless!
A weary thought--a fearful thought--
Within the secret heart to keep:
Would that the past might be forgot--
Would that the dead might sleep!
These are the concluding lines of a long poem written in 1829, while he
was editing the "American Manufacturer." The poem as a whole was never
in print; but these lines of it I find in the "Essex Gazette" of August
22, 1829, from which paper they were copied, as were most of his
productions of that period, by the newspapers of the country. They were
never in any collection of his works:--
A FRAGMENT
Lady, farewell! I know thy heart
Has angel strength to soar above
The cold reserve--the studied art
That mock the glowing wings of love.
Its thoughts are purer than the pearl
That slumbers where the wave is driven,
Yet freer than the winds that furl
The banners of the clouded heaven.
And thou hast been the brightest star
That shone along my weary way--
Brighter than rainbow visions are,
A changeless and enduring ray.
Nor will my memory lightly fade
From thy pure dreams, high-thoughted girl;--
The ocean may forget what made
Its blue expanse of waters curl,
When the strong winds have passed the sky;
Earth in its beauty may forget
The recent cloud that floated by;
The glories of the last sunset--
But not from thy unchanging mind
Will fade the dreams of other years,
And love will linger far behind,
In memory's resting place of tears!
Many of Whittier's early discarded verses are of a rather gruesome
sort, but more are inspired by contemplation of sublime themes, like
this apostrophe to "Eternity," which was published in the "New England
Review" in 1831:--
ETERNITY
Boundless eternity! the winged sands
That mark the silent lapse of flitting time
Are not for thee; thine awful empire stands
From age to age, unchangeable, sublime;
Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb,
In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest.
I may not fathom thee: 't would seem a crime
Thy being of its mystery to divest
Or boldly lift thine awful veil with hands unblest.
Thy ruins are the wrecks of systems; suns
Blaze a brief space of age, and are not;
Worlds crumble and decay, creation runs
To waste--then perishes and is forgot;
Yet thou, all changeless, heedest not the blot.
Heaven speaks once more in thunder; empty space
Trembles and wakes; new worlds in ether float,
Teeming with new creative life, and trace
Their mighty circles, which others shall displace.
Thine age is youth, thy youth is hoary age,
Ever beginning, never ending, thou
Bearest inscribed upon thy ample page,
Yesterday, forever, but as now
Thou art, thou hast been, shall be: though
I feel myself immortal, when on thee
I muse, I shrink to nothingness, and bow
Myself before thee, dread Eternity,
With God coeval, coexisting, still to be.
I go with thee till time shall be no more,
I stand with thee on Time's remotest age,
Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er;
Still, still with thee my onward course I urge;
And now no longer hear the surge
Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore
Of distant earth; no more the solemn dirge--
Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er--
Steals by: still thou art on forever more.
From that dim distance I turn to gaze
With fondly searching glance, upon the spot
Of brief existence, when I met the blaze
Of morning, bursting on my humble cot,
And gladness whispered of my happy lot;
And now 't is dwindled to a point--a speck--
And now 't is nothing, and my eye may not
Longer distinguish it amid the wreck
Of worlds in ruins, crushed at the Almighty's beck.
Time--what is time to thee? a passing thought
To twice ten thousand ages--a faint spark
To twice ten thousand suns; a fibre wrought
Into the web of infinite--a cork
Balanced against a world: we hardly mark
Its being--even its name hath ceased to be;
Thy wave hath swept it from us, thy dark
Mantle of years, in dim obscurity
Hath shrouded it around: Time--what is Time to thee!
In 1832 a living ichneumon was brought to Haverhill, and was on
exhibition at Frinksborough, a section of Haverhill now known as "the
borough," on the bank of the river above the railroad bridge. Three
young ladies of Haverhill went to see it, escorted by Mr. Whittier.
They found that the animal had succumbed to the New England climate,
and had just been buried. One of the ladies, Harriet Minot, afterward
Mrs. Pitman, a life-long friend of the poet, suggested that he should
write an elegy, and these are the lines he produced:--
THE DEAD ICHNEUMON
Stranger! they have made thy grave
By the darkly flowing river;
But the washing of its wave
Shall disturb thee never!
Nor its autumn tides which run
Turbid to the rising sun,
Nor the harsh and hollow thunder,
When its fetters burst asunder,
And its winter ice is sweeping,
Downward to the ocean's keeping.
Sleeper! thou canst rest as calm
As beside thine own dark stream,
In the shadow of the palm,
Or the white sand gleam!
Though thy grave be never hid
By the o'ershadowing pyramid,
Frowning o'er the desert sand,
Like no work of mortal hand,
Telling aye the same proud story
Of the old Egyptian glory!
Wand'rer! would that we might know
Something of thy early time--
Something of thy weal or woe
In thine own far clime!
If thy step hath fallen where
Those of Cleopatra were,
When the Roman cast his crown
At a woman's footstool down,
Deeming glory's sunshine dim
To the smile which welcomed him.
If beside the reedy Nile
Thou hast ever held thy way,
Where the embryo crocodile
In the damp sedge lay;
When the river monster's eye
Kindled at thy passing by,
And the pliant reeds were bending
Where his blackened form was wending,
And the basking serpent started
Wildly when thy light form darted.
Thou hast seen the desert steed
Mounted by his Arab chief,
Passing like some dream of speed,
Wonderful and brief!
Where the palm-tree's shadows lurk,
Thou hast seen the turbaned Turk,
Resting in voluptuous pride
With his harem at his side,
Veiled victims of his will,
Scorned and lost, yet lovely still.
And the samiel hath gone
O'er thee like a demon's breath,
Marking victims one by one
For its master--Death.
And the mirage thou hast seen
Glittering in the sunny sheen,
Like some lake in sunlight sleeping,
Where the desert wind was sweeping,
And the sandy column gliding,
Like some giant onward striding.
Once the dwellers of thy home
Blessed the path thy race had trod,
Kneeling in the temple dome
To a reptile god;
Where the shrine of Isis shone
Through the veil before its throne,
And the priest with fixed eyes
Watched his human sacrifice;
And the priestess knelt in prayer,
Like some dream of beauty there.
Thou, unhonored and unknown,
Wand'rer o'er the mighty sea!
None for thee have reverence shown--
None have worshipped thee!
Here in vulgar Yankee land,
Thou hast passed from hand to hand,
And in Frinksborough found a home,
Where no change can ever come!
What thy closing hours befell
None may ask, and none may tell.
Who hath mourned above thy grave?
None--except thy ancient nurse.
Well she may--thy being gave
Coppers to her purse!
Who hath questioned her of thee?
None, alas! save maidens three,
Here to view thee while in being,
Yankee curious, paid for seeing,
And would gratis view once more
That for which they paid before.
Yet thy quiet rest may be
Envied by the human kind,
Who are showing off like thee,
To the careless mind,
Gifts which torture while they flow,
Thoughts which madden while they glow,
Pouring out the heart's deep wealth,
Proffering quiet, ease, and health,
For the fame which comes to them
Blended with their requiem!
The following poem, which I have never seen in print, I find in a
manuscript collection of Whittier's early poems, in the possession of
his cousin, Ann Wendell, of Philadelphia. It is a political curiosity,
being a reminiscence of the excitement caused by the mystery of the
disappearance of William Morgan, in the vicinity of Niagara Falls, in
1826. It was written in 1830, three years before Whittier became
especially active in the anti-slavery cause. He was then working in the
interest of Henry Clay as against Jackson, and the Whigs had adopted
some of the watchwords of the Anti-Masonic party:--
THE GRAVE OF MORGAN
Wild torrent of the lakes! fling out
Thy mighty wave to breeze and sun,
And let the rainbow curve above
The foldings of thy clouds of dun.
Uplift thy earthquake voice, and pour
Its thunder to the reeling shore,
Till caverned cliff and hanging wood
Roll back the echo of thy flood,
For there is one who slumbers now
Beneath thy bow-encircled brow,
Whose spirit hath a voice and sign
More strong, more terrible than thine.
A million hearts have heard that cry
Ring upward to the very sky;
It thunders still--it cannot sleep,
But louder than the troubled deep,
When the fierce spirit of the air
Hath made his arm of vengeance bare,
And wave to wave is calling loud
Beneath the veiling thunder-cloud;
That potent voice is sounding still--
The voice of unrequited ill.
Dark cataract of the lakes! thy name
Unholy deeds have linked to fame.
High soars to heaven thy giant head,
Even as a monument to him
Whose cold unheeded form is laid
Down, down amid thy caverns dim.
His requiem the fearful tone
Of waters falling from their throne
In the mid air, his burial shroud
The wreathings of thy torrent cloud,
His blazonry the rainbow thrown
Superbly round thy brow of stone.
Aye, raise thy voice--the sterner one
Which tells of crime in darkness done,
Groans upward from thy prison gloom
Like voices from the thunder's home.
And men have heard it, and the might
Of freemen rising from their thrall
Shall drag their fetters into light,
And spurn and trample on them all.
And vengeance long--too long delayed--
Shall rouse to wrath the souls of men,
And freedom raise her holy head
Above the fallen tyrant then.
This poem, which was published in "The Haverhill Gazette" in 1829, was
copied in many papers of that time, but was never in any collection of
its author's works:--
THE THUNDER SPIRIT
Dweller of the unpillared air,
Marshalling the storm to war,
Heralding its presence where
Rolls along thy cloudy car!
Thou that speakest from on high,
Like an earthquake's bursting forth,
Sounding through the veiled sky
As an angel's trumpet doth.
Bending from thy dark dominion
Like a fierce, revengeful king,
Blasting with thy fiery pinion
Every high and holy thing;
Smitten from their mountain prison
Thou hast bid the streams go free,
And the ruin's smoke has risen,
Like a sacrifice to thee!
. . . . .
Monarch of each cloudy form,
Gathered on the blue of heaven,
When the trumpet of the storm
To thy lip of flame is given!
In the wave and in the breeze,
In the shadow and the sun,
God hath many languages,
And thy mighty voice is one!
Here is a poem of Whittier's that will remind every reader of the hymn
"The Worship of Nature," which first appeared without a title in the
"Tent on the Beach." And yet there is no line in it, and scarcely a
phrase, which was used in this last named poem. I find it in the "New
England Review," of Hartford, under date of January 24, 1831. It would
seem that "The Worship of Nature" was a favorite theme of his, for a
still earlier treatment of it I have found in the "Haverhill Gazette"
of October 5, 1827, written before the poet was twenty years of age. It
is a curious fact that while in the version of 1827 there are a few
lines and phrases which were adopted forty years afterward, the lines
given here are none of them copied in the final revision of the poem.
THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
"The air
Is glorious with the spirit-march
Of messengers of prayer."
There is a solemn hymn goes up
From Nature to the Lord above,
And offerings from her incense-cup
Are poured in gratitude and love;
And from each flower that lifts its eye
In modest silence in the shade
To the strong woods that kiss the sky
A thankful song of praise is made.
There is no solitude on earth--
"In every leaf there is a tongue"--
In every glen a voice of mirth--
From every hill a hymn is sung;
And every wild and hidden dell,
Where human footsteps never trod,
Is wafting songs of joy, which tell
The praises of their maker--God.
Each mountain gives an altar birth,
And has a shrine to worship given;
Each breeze which rises from the earth
Is loaded with a song of Heaven;
Each wave that leaps along the main
Sends solemn music on the air,
And winds which sweep o'er ocean's plain
Bear off their voice of grateful prayer.
When Night's dark wings are slowly furled
And clouds roll off the orient sky,
And sunlight bursts upon the world,
Like angels' pinions flashing by,
A matin hymn unheard will rise
From every flower and hill and tree,
And songs of joy float up the skies,
Like holy anthems from the sea.
When sunlight dies, and shadows fall,
And twilight plumes her rosy wing,
Devotion's breath lifts Music's pall,
And silvery voices seem to sing.
And when the earth falls soft to rest,
And young wind's pinions seem to tire,
Then the pure streams upon its breast
Join their glad sounds with Nature's lyre.
And when the sky that bends above
Is lighted up with spirit fires,
A gladdening song of praise and love
Is pealing from the sky-tuned lyres;
And every star that throws its light
From off Creation's bending brow,
Is offering on the shrine of Night
The same unchanging subject-vow.
Thus Earth 's a temple vast and fair,
Filled with the glorious works of love
When earth and sky and sea and air
Join in the praise of God above;
And still through countless coming years
Unwearied songs of praise shall roll
On plumes of love to Him who hears
The softest strain in Music's soul.
There was a remarkable display of the aurora borealis in January, 1837,
and this poem commemorates the phenomenon:--
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
A light is troubling heaven! A strange dull glow
Hangs like a half-quenched veil of fire between
The blue sky and the earth; and the shorn stars
Gleam faint and sickly through it. Day hath left
No token of its parting, and the blush
With which it welcomed the embrace of Night
Has faded from the blue cheek of the West;
Yet from the solemn darkness of the North,
Stretched o'er the "empty place" by God's own hand,
Trembles and waves that curtain of pale fire,--
Tingeing with baleful and unnatural hues
The winter snows beneath. It is as if
Nature's last curse--the fearful plague of fire--
Were working in the elements, and the skies
Even as a scroll consuming.