SUMMARY. The early part of the nineteenth century (sometimes called

the First National period of American letters) was a time of

unusual enthusiasm. The country had recently won its independence

and taken its place among the free nations of the world; it had

emerged triumphant from a period of doubt and struggle over the

Constitution and the Union; it was increasing with amazing rapidity

in territory, in population and in the wealth which followed a

successful commerce; its people were united as never before by

noble pride in the past and by a great hope for the future. It is

not surprising, therefore, that our first really national

literature (that is, a literature which was read by practically the

whole country, and which represented America to foreign nations)

should appear in this expansive age as an expression of the

national enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: CHIEF WRITERS]

The four chief writers of the period are: Irving, the pleasant

essayist, story-teller and historian; Bryant, the poet of primeval

nature; Cooper, the novelist, who was the first American author to

win world-wide fame; and Poe, the most cunning craftsman among our

early writers, who wrote a few melodious poems and many tales of

mystery or horror. Some critics would include also among the major

writers William Gilmore Simms (sometimes called "the Cooper of the

South"), author of many adventurous romances dealing with pioneer

life and with Colonial and Revolutionary history.

The numerous minor writers of the age are commonly grouped in local

schools. The Knickerbocker school, of New York, includes the poets

Halleck and Drake, the novelist Paulding, and one writer of

miscellaneous prose and verse, Nathaniel P. Willis, who was for a

time more popular than any other American writer save Cooper. In

the southern school (led by Poe and Simms) were Wilde, Kennedy and

William Wirt. The West was represented by Timothy Flint and James

Hall. In New England were the poets Percival and Maria Brooks, the

novelists Sarah Morton and Catherine Sedgwick, and the historians

Sparks and Bancroft. The writers we have named are merely typical;

there were literally hundreds of others who were more or less

widely known in the middle of the last century.

[Sidenote: FOREIGN INFLUENCE]

The first common characteristic of these writers was their

patriotic enthusiasm; the second was their romantic spirit. The

romantic movement in English poetry was well under way at this

time, and practically all our writers were involved in it. They

were strongly influenced, moreover, by English writers of the

period or by settled English literary traditions. Thus, Irving

modeled his style closely on that of Addison; the early poetry of

Bryant shows the influence of Wordsworth; the weird tales of Poe

and his critical essays were both alike influenced by Coleridge;

and the quickening influence of Scott appears plainly in the

romances of Cooper. The minor writers were even more subject to

foreign influences, especially to German and English romanticism.

There was, however, a sturdy independence in the work of most of

these writers which stamps it as original and unmistakably

American. The nature poetry of Bryant with its rugged strength and

simplicity, the old Dutch legends and stories of Irving, the

pioneer romances of Cooper and Simms, the effective short stories

of Poe,--these have hardly a counterpart in foreign writings of the

period. They are the first striking expressions of the new American

spirit in literature.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Irving's Sketch Book, in Standard English

Classics and various other school editions (see "Texts" in General

Bibliography); The Alhambra, in Ginn and Company's Classics for

Children; parts of Bracebridge Hall, in Riverside Literature;

Conquest of Granada and other works, in Everyman's Library.

Selections from Bryant, in Riverside Literature and Pocket

Classics.

Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, in Standard English Classics and

other school editions; the five Leatherstocking tales, in

Everyman's Library; The Spy, in Riverside Literature.

Selections from Poe, prose and verse, in Standard English Classics,

Silver Classics, Johnson's English Classics, Lake English Classics.

Simms's The Yemassee, in Johnson's English Classics. Typical

selections from minor authors of the period, in Readings from

American Literature and other anthologies (see "Selections" in

General Bibliography).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For works covering the whole field of American

history and literature see the General Bibliography. The following

are recommended for a special study of the early part of the

nineteenth century.

_HISTORY_. Adams, History of the United States, 1801-1817, 9

vols.; Von Holst, Constitutional and Political History, 1787-1861,

8 vols.; Sparks, Expansion of the American People; Low, The

American People; Expedition of Lewis and Clarke, in Original

Narratives Series (Scribner); Page, The Old South; Drake, The

Making of the West.

_LITERATURE_. There is no good literary history devoted to

this period. Critical studies of the authors named in the text may

be found in Richardson's American Literature and other general

histories. For the lives of minor authors see Adams, Dictionary of

American Authors, or Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.

_Irving_. Life and Letters, by P. M. Irving, 4 vols., in

Crayon edition of Irving's works. Life by Warner, in American Men

of Letters; by Hill, in American Authors; by Boynton (brief), in

Riverside Biographies.

Essays by Brownell, in American Prose Masters; by Payne, in Leading

American Essayists; by Perry, in A Study of Prose Fiction; by

Curtis, in Literary and Social Addresses.

_Bryant_. Life, by Godwin, 2 vols.; by Bigelow, in American

Men of Letters; by Curtis. Wilson, Bryant and his Friends.

Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Curtis, in Orations and

Addresses; by Whipple, in Literature and Life; by Burton, in

Literary Leaders.

_Cooper_. Life, by Lounsbury, in American Men of Letters; by

Clymer (brief), in Beacon Biographies.

Essays, by Erskine, in Leading American Novelists; by Brownell, in

American Prose Masters; by Matthews, in Gateways to Literature.

_Poe_. Life, by Woodberry, in American Men of Letters; by

Trent, in English Men of Letters; Life and Letters, 2 vols., by

Harrison.

Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Brownell, in American

Prose Masters; by Burton, in Literary Leaders; by Higginson, in

Short Studies of American Authors; by Andrew Lang, in Letters to

Dead Authors; by Gates, in Studies and Appreciations; by Gosse, in

Questions at Issue.

_Simms_. Life, by Trent, in American Men of Letters. Critical

studies by Moses, in Literature of the South; by Link, in Pioneers

of Southern Literature; by Wauchope, in Writers of South Carolina.

_FICTION_. A few novels dealing with the period are: Brown,

Arthur Merwyn; Kennedy, Swallow Barn; Paulding, Westward Ho; Mrs.

Stowe, The Minister's Wooing; Cooke, Leather Stocking and Silk;

Eggleston, The Circuit Rider, The Hoosier Schoolmaster; Winthrop,

John Brent.

CHAPTER III

THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT (1840-1876)

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on Life's parade shall meet

That brave and fallen few.

On Fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread,

And Glory guards, with solemn round,

The bivouac of the dead.

O'Hara, "The Bivouac of the Dead"

POLITICAL HISTORY. To study the history of America after 1840 is to

have our attention drawn as by a powerful lodestone to the Civil

War. It looms there in the middle of the nineteenth century, a

stupendous thing, dominating and dwarfing all others. To it

converge many ways that then seemed aimless or wandering, the

unanswered questions of the Constitution, the compromises of

statesmen, the intrigues of politicians, the clamor of impatient

reformers, the silent degradation of the slave. And from it, all

its passion and suffering forgotten, its heroism remembered,

proceed the unexpected blessings of a finer love of country, a

broader sense of union, a surer faith in democracy, a better

understanding of the spirit of America, more gratitude for her

glorious past, more hope for her future. So every thought or

mention of the mighty conflict draws us onward, as the first sight

of the Rockies, massive and snow crowned, lures the feet of the

wanderer on the plains.

We shall not attempt here to summarize the war between the South

and the North or even to list its causes and consequences. The

theme is too vast. We note only that the main issues of the

conflict, state rights and slavery, had been debated for the better

part of a century, and might still have found peaceful solution had

they not been complicated by the minor issues of such an age of

agitation as America never saw before and, as we devoutly hope, may

never see again.

[Illustration: "The Man" (Abraham Lincoln)]

[Sidenote: THE AGE OF AGITATION]

Such agitation was perhaps inevitable in a country that had grown

too rapidly for its government to assimilate the new possessions.

By the Oregon treaty, the war with Mexico and the annexation of

Texas vast territories had suddenly been added to the Union, each

with its problem that called for patient and wise deliberation, but

that a passionate and half-informed Congress was expected to settle

overnight. With the expansion of territory in the West came a

marvelous increase of trade and wealth in the North, and a

corresponding growth in the value of cotton and slave labor in the

South. Then arose an economic strife; the agricultural interests of

one part of the country clashed with the manufacturing interests of

another (in such matters as the tariff, for example), and in the

tumult of party politics it was impossible to reach any harmonious

adjustment. Finally, the violent agitation of the slave question

forced it to the front not simply as a moral or human but as a

political issue; for the old "balance of power" between the states

was upset when the North began to outstrip the South in population,

and every state was then fiercely jealous of its individual rights

and obligations in a way that we can now hardly comprehend.

As a result of these conflicting interests and the local or

sectional passions which they aroused, there was seldom a year

after 1840 when the country did not face a situation of extreme

difficulty or danger. Indeed, even while Webster was meditating his

prophetic oration with its superb climax of "Liberty and Union, now

and forever, one and inseparable," many of the most thoughtful

minds, south and north, believed that Congress faced a problem

beyond its power to solve; that no single government was wise

enough or strong enough to meet the situation, especially a

government divided against itself.

[Sidenote: THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND]

In the midst of the political tumult, which was increased by the

clamor of agitators and reformers, came suddenly the secession of a

state from the Union, an act long threatened, long feared, but

which arrived at last with the paralyzing effect of a thunderbolt.

Then the clamor ceased; minor questions were swept aside as by a

tempest, and the main issues were settled not by constitutional

rights, not by orderly process of law or the ballot, but by the

fearful arbitrament of the sword. And even as the thunderbolt fell

and the Union trembled, came also unheralded one gaunt, heroic,

heaven-sent man to lead the nation in its hour of peril:

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,

Gentle and merciful and just!

Who in the fear of God didst bear

The sword of power, a nation's trust!

Such is an outline of the period of conflict, an outline to which

the political measures or compromises of the time, its sectional

antagonism, its score of political parties, its agitators,

reformers, and all other matters of which we read confusedly in the

histories, are but so many illuminating details.

SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHANGES. The mental ferment of the period

was almost as intense as its political agitation. Thus, the

antislavery movement, which aimed to rescue the negro from his

servitude, was accompanied by a widespread communistic attempt to

save the white man from the manifold evils of our competitive

system of industry. Brook Farm [Footnote: This was a Massachusetts

society, founded in 1841 by George Ripley. It included Hawthorne,

Dana and Curtis in its large membership, and it had the support of

Emerson, Greeley, Channing, Margaret Fuller and a host of other

prominent men and women] was the most famous of these communities;

but there were more than thirty others scattered over the country,

all holding property in common, working on a basis of mutual

helpfulness, aiming at a nobler life and a better system of labor

than that which now separates the capitalist and the workingman.

[Sidenote: WIDENING HORIZONS]

This brave attempt at human brotherhood, of which Brook Farm was

the visible symbol, showed itself in many other ways: in the

projection of a hundred social reforms; in the establishment of

lyceums throughout the country, where every man with a message

might find a hearing. In education our whole school system was

changed by applying the methods of Pestalozzi, a Swiss reformer;

for the world had suddenly become small, thanks to steam and

electricity, and what was spoken in a corner the newspapers

immediately proclaimed from the housetops. In religious circles the

Unitarian movement, under Channing's leadership, gained rapidly in

members and in influence; in literature the American horizon was

broadened by numerous translations from the classic books of

foreign countries; in the realm of philosophy the western mind was

stimulated by the teaching of the idealistic system known as

Transcendentalism.

[Sidenote: TRANSCENDENTALISM]

Emerson was the greatest exponent of this new philosophy, which

made its appearance here in 1836. It exalted the value of the

individual man above society or institutions; and in dealing with

the individual it emphasized his freedom rather than his subjection

to authority, his soul rather than his body, his inner wealth of

character rather than his outward possessions. It taught that

nature was an open book of the Lord in which he who runs may read a

divine message; and in contrast with eighteenth-century philosophy

(which had described man as a creature of the senses, born with a

blank mind, and learning only by experience), it emphasized the

divinity of man's nature, his inborn ideas of right and wrong, his

instinct of God, his passion for immortality,--in a word, his

higher knowledge which transcends the knowledge gained from the

senses, and which is summarized in the word "Transcendentalism."

We have described this in the conventional way as a new philosophy,

though in truth it is almost as old as humanity. Most of the great

thinkers of the world, in all ages and in all countries, have been

transcendentalists; but in the original way in which the doctrine

was presented by Emerson it seemed like a new revelation, as all

fine old things do when they are called to our attention, and it

exercised a profound influence on our American life and literature.

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD. The violent political agitation and the profound

social unrest of the period found expression in multitudinous works of

prose or verse; but the curious fact is that these are all minor works, and

could without much loss be omitted from our literary records. They are

mostly sectional in spirit, and only what is national or human can long

endure.

[Sidenote: MINOR WORKS]

To illustrate our criticism, the terrible war that dominates the period

never had any worthy literary expression; there are thousands of writings

but not a single great poem or story or essay or drama on the subject. The

antislavery movement likewise brought forth its poets, novelists, orators

and essayists; some of the greater writers were drawn into its whirlpool of

agitation, and Whittier voiced the conviction that the age called for a man

rather than a poet in a cry which was half defiance and half regret:

Better than self-indulgent years

The outflung heart of youth,

Than pleasant songs in idle ears

The tumult of the truth!

That was the feeling in the heart of many a promising young southern or

northern poet in midcentury, just as it was in 1776, when our best writers

neglected literature for political satires against Whigs or Tories. Yet of

the thousand works which the antislavery agitation inspired we can think of

only one, Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, which lives with power to

our own day; and there is something of universal human nature in that

famous book, written not from knowledge or experience but from the

imagination, which appeals broadly to our human sympathy, and which makes

it welcome in countries where slavery as a political or a moral issue has

long since been forgotten.

[Sidenote: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS]

Though the ferment of the age produced no great books, it certainly

influenced our literature, making it a very different product from that of

the early national period. For example, nearly every political issue soon

became a moral issue; and there is a deep ethical earnestness in the essays

of Emerson, the poems of Longfellow and the novels of Hawthorne which sets

them apart, as of a different spirit, from the works of Irving, Poe and

Cooper.

Again, the mental unrest of the period showed itself in a passion for new

ideas, new philosophy, new prose and poetry. We have already spoken of the

transcendental philosophy, but even more significant was the sudden

broadening of literary interest. American readers had long been familiar

with the best English poets; now they desired to know how our common life

had been reflected by poets of other nations. In answer to that desire

came, first, the establishment of professorships of _belles-lettres_

in our American colleges; and then a flood of translations from European

and oriental literatures. As we shall presently see, every prominent writer

from Emerson to Whitman was influenced by new views of life as reflected in

the world's poetry. Longfellow is a conspicuous example; with his songs

inspired by Spanish or German or Scandinavian originals he is at times more

like an echo of Europe than a voice from the New World.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LONGFELLOW, AT FALMOUTH (NOW PORTLAND), MAINE]

[Sidenote: AN AGE OF POETRY]

Finally, this period of conflict was governed more largely than usual by

ideals, by sentiment, by intense feeling. Witness the war, with the heroic

sentiments which it summoned up south and north. As the deepest human

feeling cannot be voiced in prose, we confront the strange phenomenon of an

American age of poetry. This would be remarkable Poetry enough to one who

remembers that the genius of America had hitherto appeared practical and

prosaic, given to action rather than speech, more concerned to "get on" in

life than to tell what life means; but it is even more remarkable in view

of the war, which covers the age with its frightful shadow. As Lincoln, sad

and overburdened, found the relief of tears in the beautiful ending of

Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," so, it seems, the heart of America,

torn by the sight of her sons in conflict, found blessed relief in songs of

love, of peace, of home, of beauty,--of all the lovely and immortal ideals

to which every war offers violent but impotent contradiction. And this may

be the simple explanation of the fact that the most cherished poems

produced by any period of war are almost invariably its songs of peace.

* * * * *

THE GREATER POETS

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)

When Longfellow sent forth his _Voices of the Night_, in 1839, that

modest little volume met with a doubly warm reception. Critics led by Poe

pounced on the work to condemn its sentimentality or moralizing, while a

multitude of readers who needed no leader raised a great shout of welcome.

Now as then there are diverse critical opinions of Longfellow, and

unfortunately these opinions sometimes obscure the more interesting facts:

that Longfellow is still the favorite of the American home, the most

honored of all our elder poets; that in foreign schools his works are

commonly used as an introduction to English verse, and that he has probably

led more young people to appreciate poetry than any other poet who ever

wrote our language. That strange literary genius Lafcadio Hearn advised his

Japanese students to begin the study of poetry with Longfellow, saying that

they might learn to like other poets better in later years, but that

Longfellow was most certain to charm them at the beginning.

The reason for this advice, given to the antipodes, was probably this, that

young hearts and pure hearts are the same the world over, and Longfellow is

the poet of the young and pure in heart.

LIFE. The impression of serenity in Longfellow's work may be

explained by the gifts which Fortune offered him in the way of

endowment, training and opportunity. By nature he was a gentleman;

his home training was of the best; to his college education four

years of foreign study were added, a very unusual thing at that

time; and no sooner was he ready for his work than the way opened

as if the magic _Sesame_ were on his lips. His own college

gave him a chair of modern languages and literature, which was the

very thing he wanted; then Harvard offered what seemed to him a

wider field, and finally his country called him from the

professor's chair to teach the love of poetry to the whole nation.

Before his long and beautiful life ended he had enjoyed for half a

century the two rewards that all poets desire, and the most of them

in vain; namely, fame and love. The first may be fairly won; the

second is a free gift.

[Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW]

Longfellow was born (1807) in the town of Falmouth, Maine, which

has since been transformed into the city of Portland. Like Bryant

he was descended from Pilgrim stock; but where the older poet's

training had been strictly puritanic, Longfellow's was more liberal

and broadly cultured. Bryant received the impulse to poetry from

his grandfather's prayers, but Longfellow seems to have heard his

first call in the sea wind. Some of his best lyrics sing of the

ocean; his early book of essays was called _Driftwood_, his

last volume of poetry _In the Harbor_; and in these lyrics and

titles we have a reflection of his boyhood impressions in looking

forth from the beautiful Falmouth headland, then a wild,

wood-fringed pasture but now a formal park:

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea tides tossing free,

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

[Sidenote: THE CALL OF BOOKS]

This first call was presently neglected for the more insistent

summons of literature; and thereafter Longfellow's inspiration was

at second hand, from books rather than from nature or humanity.

Soon after his graduation from Bowdoin (1825) he was offered a

professorship in modern languages on condition that he prepare

himself for the work by foreign study. With a glad heart he

abandoned the law, which he had begun to study in his father's

office, and spent three happy years in France, Spain and Italy.

There he steeped himself in European poetry, and picked up a

reading knowledge of several languages. Strangely enough, the

romantic influence of Europe was reflected by this poet in a book

of prose essays, _Outre Mer_, modeled on Irving's _Sketch

Book_.

[Sidenote: YEARS OF TEACHING]

For five years Longfellow taught the modern languages at Bowdoin,

and his subject was so new in America that he had to prepare his

own textbooks. Then, after another period of foreign study (this

time in Denmark and Germany), he went to Harvard, where he taught

modern languages and literature for eighteen years. In 1854 he

resigned his chair, and for the remainder of his life devoted

himself whole-heartedly to poetry.

His literary work began with newspaper verses, the best of which

appear in the "Earlier Poems" of his collected works. Next he

attempted prose in his _Outre Mer_, _Driftwood Essays_

and the romances _Hyperion_ and _Kavanagh_. In 1839

appeared his first volume of poetry, _Voices of the Night_,

after which few years went by without some notable poem or volume

from Longfellow's pen. His last book, _In the Harbor_,

appeared with the news of his death, in 1882.

[Sidenote: HIS SERENITY]

Aside from these "milestones" there is little to record in a career

so placid that we remember by analogy "The Old Clock on the

Stairs." For the better part of his life he lived in Cambridge,

where he was surrounded by a rare circle of friends, and whither

increasing numbers came from near or far to pay the tribute of

gratitude to one who had made life more beautiful by his singing.

Once only the serenity was broken by a tragedy, the death of the

poet's wife, who was fatally burned before his eyes,--a tragedy

which occasioned his translation of Dante's _Divina Commedia_

(by which work he strove to keep his sorrow from overwhelming him)

and the exquisite "Cross of Snow." The latter seemed too sacred for

publication; it was found, after the poet's death, among his

private papers.

[Sidenote: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE]

Reading Longfellow's poems one would never suspect that they were

produced in an age of turmoil. To be sure, one finds a few poems on

slavery (sentimental effusions, written on shipboard to relieve the

monotony of a voyage), but these were better unwritten since they

added nothing to the poet's song and took nothing from the slave's

burden. Longfellow has been criticized for his inaction in the

midst of tumult, but possibly he had his reasons. When everybody's

shouting is an excellent time to hold your tongue. He had his own

work to do, a work for which he was admirably fitted; that he did

not turn aside from it is to his credit and our profit. One demand

of his age was, as we have noted elsewhere, to enter into the

wealth of European poetry; and he gave thirty years of his life to

satisfying that demand. Our own poetry was then sentimental, a kind

of "sugared angel-cake"; and Longfellow, who was sentimental enough

but whose sentiment was balanced by scholarship, made poetry that

was like wholesome bread to common men. Lowell was a more brilliant

writer, and Whittier a more inspired singer; but neither did a work

for American letters that is comparable to that of Longfellow, who

was essentially an educator, a teacher of new ideas, new values,

new beauty. His influence in broadening our literary culture, in

deepening our sympathy for the poets of other lands, and in making

our own poetry a true expression of American feeling is beyond

measure.

MINOR POEMS. It was by his first simple poems that Longfellow won the

hearts of his people, and by them he is still most widely and gratefully

remembered. To name these old favorites ("The Day is Done," "Resignation,"

"Ladder of St. Augustine," "Rainy Day," "Footsteps of Angels," "Light of

Stars," "Reaper and the Flowers," "Hymn to the Night," "Midnight Mass,"

"Excelsior," "Village Blacksmith," "Psalm of Life") is to list many of the

poems that are remembered and quoted wherever in the round world the

English language is spoken.

[Sidenote: VESPER SONGS]

Ordinarily such poems are accepted at their face value as a true expression

of human sentiment; but if we examine them critically, remembering the

people for whom they were written, we may discover the secret of their

popularity. The Anglo-Saxons are first a busy and then a religious folk;

when their day's work is done their thoughts turn naturally to higher

matters; and any examination of Longfellow's minor works shows that a large

proportion of them deal with the thoughts or feelings of men at the close

of day. Such poems would be called _Abendlieder_ in German; a good

Old-English title for them would be "Evensong"; and both titles suggest the

element of faith or worship. In writing these poems Longfellow had,

unconsciously perhaps, the same impulse that leads one man to sing a hymn

and another to say his prayers when the day is done. Because he expresses

this almost universal feeling simply and reverently, his work is dear to

men and women who would not have the habit of work interfere with the

divine instinct of worship.

Further examination of these minor poems shows them to be filled with

sentiment that often slips over the verge of sentimentality. The sentiments

expressed are not of the exalted, imaginative kind; they are the sentiments

of plain people who feel deeply but who can seldom express their feeling.

Now, most people are sentimental (though we commonly try to hide the fact,

more's the pity), and we are at heart grateful to the poet who says for us

in simple, musical language what we are unable or ashamed to say for

ourselves. In a word, the popularity of Longfellow's poems rests firmly on

the humanity of the poet.

[Sidenote: TYPICAL POEMS]

Besides these vesper songs are a hundred other short poems, among which the

reader must make his own selection. The ballads should not be neglected,

for Longfellow knew how to tell a story in verse. If he were too prone to

add a moral to his tale (a moral that does not speak for itself were better

omitted), we can overlook the fault, since his moral was a good one and his

readers liked it. The "occasional" poems, also, written to celebrate

persons or events (such as "Building of the Ship," "Hanging of the Crane,"

"Morituri Salutamus," "Bells of Lynn," "Robert Burns," "Chamber over the

Gate") well deserved the welcome which the American people gave them. And

the sonnets (such as "Three Friends," "Victor and Vanquished," "My Books,"

"Nature," "Milton," "President Garfield," "Giotto's Tower") are not only

the most artistic of Longfellow's works but rank very near to the best

sonnets in the English language.

AMERICAN IDYLS. In the same spirit in which Tennyson wrote his _English

Idyls_ the American poet sent forth certain works reflecting the beauty

of common life on this side of the ocean; and though he never collected or

gave them a name, we think of them as his "American Idyls." Many of his

minor poems belong to this class, but we are thinking especially of

_Evangeline_, _Miles Standish_ and _Hiawatha_. The

last-named, with its myths and legends clustering around one heroic

personage, is commonly called an epic; but its songs of Chibiabos,

Minnehaha, Nokomis and the little Hiawatha are more like idyllic pictures

of the original Americans.

[Sidenote: EVANGELINE]

_Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie_ (1847) met the fate of Longfellow's

earlier poems in that it was promptly attacked by a few critics while a

multitude of people read it with delight. Its success may be explained on

four counts. First, it is a charming story, not a "modern" or realistic but

a tender, pathetic story such as we read in old romances, and such as young

people will cherish so long as they remain young people. Second, it had a

New World setting, one that was welcomed in Europe because it offered

readers a new stage, more vast, shadowy, mysterious, than that to which

they were accustomed; and doubly welcomed here because it threw the glamor

of romance over familiar scenes which deserved but had never before found

their poet. Third, this old romance in a new setting was true to universal

human nature; its sentiments of love, faith and deathless loyalty were such

as make the heart beat faster wherever true hearts are found. Finally, it

was written in an unusual verse form, the unrimed hexameter, which

Longfellow handled as well, let us say, as most other English poets who

have tried to use that alluring but difficult measure. For hexameters are

like the Italian language, which is very easy to "pick up," but which few

foreigners ever learn to speak with the rhythm and melody of a child of

Tuscany.

Longfellow began his hexameters fairly well, as witness the opening lines

of _Evangeline_:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

Occasionally also he produced a very good but not quite perfect line or

passage:

And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow,

So with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation,

Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges.

One must confess, however, that such passages are exceptional, and that one

must change the proper stress of a word too frequently to be enthusiastic

over Longfellow's hexameters. Some of his lines halt or hobble, refusing to

move to the chosen measure, and others lose all their charm when spoken

aloud:

When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

That line has been praised by critics, but one must believe that they never

pronounced it. To voice its sibilant hissing is to understand the symbol

for a white man in the Indian sign language; that is, two fingers of a hand

extended before the face, like the fork of a serpent's tongue. [Footnote:

This curious symbol, a snake's tongue to represent an Englishman, was

invented by some Indian whose ears were pained by a language in which the

_s_ sounds occur too frequently. Our plurals are nearly all made that

way, unfortunately; but Longfellow was able to make a hissing line without

the use of a single plural.] On the whole, Longfellow's verse should be

judged not by itself but as a part of the tale he was telling. Holmes

summed up the first impression of many readers by saying that he found

these "brimming lines" an excellent medium for a charming story.

That is more than one can truthfully say of the next important idyl, _The

Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858). The story is a good one and, more

than all the histories, has awakened a romantic interest in the Pilgrims;

but its unhappy hexameters go jolting along, continually upsetting the

musical rhythm, until we wish that the tale had been told in either prose

or poetry.

[Sidenote: SONG OF HIAWATHA]

_The Song of Hiawatha_ (1855) was Longfellow's greatest work, and by

it he will probably be longest remembered as a world poet. The materials

for this poem, its musical names, its primitive traditions, its fascinating

folklore, were all taken from Schoolcraft's books about the Ojibway

Indians; its peculiar verse form, with its easy rhythm and endless

repetition, was copied from the _Kalevala_, the national epic of

Finland. Material and method, the tale and the verse form, were finely

adapted to each other; and though Longfellow showed no originality in

_Hiawatha_, his poetic talent or genius appears in this: that these

tales of childhood are told in a childlike spirit; that these forest

legends have the fragrance of hemlock in them; and that as we read them,

even now, we seem to see the wigwam with its curling smoke, and beyond the

wigwam the dewy earth, the shining river, and the blue sky with its pillars

of tree trunks and its cloud of rustling leaves. The simplicity and

naturalness of primitive folklore is in this work of Longfellow, who of a

hundred writers at home and abroad was the first to reveal the poetry in

the soul of an Indian.

As the poem is well known we forbear quotation; as it is too long, perhaps,

we express a personal preference in naming "Hiawatha's Childhood," his

"Friends," his "Fishing" and his "Wooing" as the parts most likely to

please the beginner. The best that can be said of _Hiawatha_ is that

it adds a new tale to the world's storybook. That book of the centuries has

only a few stories, each of which portrays a man from birth to death,

fronting the problems of this life, meeting its joy or sorrow in man

fashion, and then setting his face bravely to "Ponemah," the Land of the

Hereafter. That Longfellow added a chapter to the volume which preserves

the stories of Ulysses, Beowulf, Arthur and Roland is undoubtedly his best

or most enduring achievement.

[Illustration: THE TAPROOM, WAYSIDE INN, SUDBURY]

HIS EXPERIMENTAL WORKS. Unless the student wants to encourage a sentimental

mood by reading _Hyperion_, Longfellow's prose works need not detain

us. Much more valuable and readable are his translations from various

European languages, and of these his metrical version of _The Divine

Comedy_ of Dante is most notable. He attempted also several dramatic

works, among which _The Spanish Student_ (1843) is still readable,

though not very convincing. In _Christus: a Mystery_ he attempted a

miracle play of three acts, dealing with Christianity in the apostolic,

medieval and modern eras; but not even his admirers were satisfied with the

result. "The Golden Legend" (one version of which Caxton printed on the

first English press, and which a score of different poets have paraphrased)

is the only part of _Christus_ that may interest young readers by its

romantic portrayal of the Middle Ages. To name such works is to suggest

Longfellow's varied interests and his habit of experimenting with any

subject or verse form that attracted him in foreign literatures.

The _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ (1863-1873) is the most popular of

Longfellow's miscellaneous works. Here are a score of stories from ancient

or modern sources, as told by a circle of the poet's friends in the Red

Horse Inn, at Sudbury. The title suggests at once the _Canterbury

Tales_ of Chaucer; but it would be unwise to make any comparison between

the two works or the two poets. The ballad of "Paul Revere's Ride" is the

best known of the _Wayside Inn_ poems; the Viking tales of "The Saga

of King Olaf" are the most vigorous; the mellow coloring of the Middle Ages

appears in such stories as "The Legend Beautiful" and "The Bell of Atri."

CHARACTERISTICS OF LONGFELLOW. The broad sympathy of Longfellow, which made

him at home in the literatures of a dozen nations, was one of his finest

qualities. He lived in Cambridge; he wrote in English; he is called the

poet of the American home; but had he lived in Finland and written in a

Scandinavian tongue, his poems must still appeal to us. Indeed, so simply

did he reflect the sentiments of the human heart that Finland or any other

nation might gladly class him among its poets.

[Sidenote: A POET OF ALL PEOPLES]

For example, many Englishmen have written about their Wellington, but, as

Hearn says, not even Tennyson's poem on the subject is quite equal to

Longfellow's "Warden of the Cinque Ports." The spirit of the Spanish

missions, with their self-sacrificing monks and their soldiers "with hearts

of fire and steel," is finely reflected in "The Bells of San Blas." The

half-superstitious loyalty of the Russian peasant for his hereditary ruler

has never been better reflected than in "The White Czar." The story of

Belisarius has been told in scores of histories and books of poetry; but

you will feel a deeper sympathy for the neglected old Roman soldier in

Longfellow's poem than in anything else you may find on the same theme. And

there are many other foreign heroes or brave deeds that find beautiful

expression in the verse of our American poet. Of late it has become almost

a critical habit to disparage Longfellow; but no critic has pointed out

another poet who has reflected with sympathy and understanding the feelings

of so many widely different peoples.

[Illustration: LONGFELLOW'S LIBRARY IN CRAIGIE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE]

Naturally such a poet had his limitations. In comparison with Chaucer, for

example, we perceive instantly that Longfellow knew only one side of life,

the better side. Unhappy or rebellious or turbulent souls were beyond his

ken. He wrote only for those who work by day and sometimes go to evensong

at night, who hopefully train their children or reverently bury their dead,

and who cleave to a writer that speaks for them the fitting word of faith

or cheer or consolation on every proper occasion. As humanity is largely

made of such men and women, Longfellow will always be a popular poet. For

him, with his serene outlook, there were not nine Muses but only three, and

their names were Faith, Hope and Charity.

[Sidenote: POETIC FAULTS]

Concerning his faults, perhaps the most illuminating thing that can be said

is that critics emphasize and ordinary readers ignore them. The reason for

this is that every poem has two elements, form and content: a critic looks

chiefly at the one, an ordinary reader at the other. Because the form of

Longfellow's verse is often faulty it is easy to criticize him, to show

that he copies the work of others, that he lacks originality, that his

figures are often forced or questionable; but the reader, the young reader

especially, may be too much interested in the charm of the poet's story or

the truth of his sentiment to dissect his poetic figures. Thus, in the

best-known of his earlier poems, "A Psalm of Life," he uses the famous

metaphor of "footprints on the sands of time." That is so bad a figure that

to analyze is to reject it; yet it never bothers young people, who would

understand the poet and like him just as well even had he written

"signboards" instead of "footprints." The point is that Longfellow is so

obviously a true and pleasant poet that his faults easily escape attention

unless we look for them. There is perhaps no better summary of our poet's

qualities than to record again the simple fact that he is the poet of young

people, to whom sentiment is the very breath of life. Should you ask the

reason for his supremacy in this respect, the answer is a paradox.

Longfellow was not an originator; he had no new song to sing, no new tale

to tell. He was the poet of old heroes, old legends, old sentiments and

ideals. Therefore he is the poet of youth.

* * * * *

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)

The strange mixture of warrior and peace lover in Whittier has led to a

strange misjudgment of his work. From the obscurity of a New England farm

he emerged as the champion of the Abolitionist party, and for thirty

tumultuous years his poems were as war cries. By such work was he judged as

"the trumpeter of a cause," and the judgment stood between him and his

audience when he sang not of a cause but of a country. Even at the present

time most critics speak of Whittier as "the antislavery poet." Stedman, for

example, focuses our attention on certain lyrics of reform which he calls

"words wrung from the nation's heart"; but the plain fact is that only a

small part of the nation approved these lyrics or took any interest in the

poet who wrote them.

Such was Whittier on one side, a militant poet of reform, sending forth

verses that had the brattle of trumpets and the waving of banners in them:

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield,

Give to Northern winds the Pine Tree on our banner's tattered field.

Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,

Answering England's royal missive with a firm, "Thus saith the Lord!"

Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!

What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.

On the other side he was a Friend, or Quaker, and the peaceful spirit of

his people found expression in lyrics of faith that have no equal in our

poetry. He was also a patriot to the core. He loved America with a profound

love; her ideals, her traditions, her epic history were in his blood, and

he glorified them in ballads and idyls that reflect the very spirit of

brave Colonial days. To judge Whittier as a trumpeter, therefore, is to

neglect all that is important in his work; for his reform poems merely

awaken the dying echoes of party clamor, while his ballads and idyls belong

to the whole American people, and his hymns of faith to the wider audience

of humanity.

LIFE. The span of Whittier's life was almost the span of the

nineteenth century. He was born (1807) in the homestead of his

ancestors at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and spent his formative

years working in the fields by day, reading beside the open fire at

night, and spending a few terms in a "deestrict" school presided

over by teachers who came or went with the spring. His schooling

was, therefore, of the scantiest kind; his real education came from

a noble home, from his country's history, from his toil and outdoor

life with its daily contact with nature. The love of home and of

homely virtues, the glorification of manhood and womanhood, the

pride of noble traditions, and always a background of meadow or

woodland or sounding sea,--these were the subjects of Whittier's

best verse, because these were the things he knew most intimately.

[Sidenote: FIRST VERSES]

It was a song of Burns that first turned Whittier to poetry; but

hardly had he begun to write songs of his own when Garrison, the

antislavery agitator, turned his thought from the peaceful farm to

the clamoring world beyond. Attracted by certain verses (Whittier's

sister Elizabeth had sent them secretly to Garrison's paper) the

editor came over to see his contributor and found to his surprise a

country lad who was in evident need of education. Instead of asking

for more poetry, therefore, Garrison awakened the boy's ambition.

For two terms he attended the Haverhill Academy, supporting himself

meanwhile by making shoes. Then his labor was needed at home; but

finding his health too delicate for farm work he chose other

occupations and contributed manfully to the support of his family.

[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER]

For several years thereafter Whittier was like a man trying to find

himself. He did factory work; he edited newspapers; he showed a

talent for political leadership; he made poems which he sold at a

price to remind him of what he had once received for making shoes.

While poetry and politics both called to him alluringly a crisis

arose; Garrison summoned him; and with a sad heart, knowing that he

left all hope of political or literary success behind, he went over

to the Abolitionist party. That was in 1833, when Whittier was

twenty-six years old. At that time the Abolitionists were detested

in the North as well as in the South, and to join them was to

become an outcast.

[Sidenote: STORM AND STRESS]

Then came the militant period of Whittier's life. He became editor

of antislavery journals; he lectured in the cause; he was stoned

for his utterances; his printing shop was burned by a mob.

Meanwhile his poems were sounding abroad like trumpet blasts,

making friends, making enemies. It was a passionate age, when

political enemies were hated like Hessians, but Whittier was always

chivalrous with his opponents. Read his "Randolph of Roanoke" for a

specific example. His "Laus Deo" (1865), a chant of exultation

written when he heard the bells ringing the news of the

constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery, was the last poem of

this period of storm and stress.

[Illustration: OAK KNOLL, WHITTIER'S HOME, DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS]

In the following year Whittier produced _Snow-Bound_, his

masterpiece. Though he had been writing for half a century, he had

never won either fame or money by his verse; but the publication of

this beautiful idyl placed him in the front rank of American poets.

Thereafter he was a national figure, and the magazines which once

scorned his verses were now most eager to print them. So he made an

end of the poverty which had been his portion since childhood.

[Sidenote: PEACEFUL YEARS]

For the remainder of his life he lived serenely at Amesbury, for

the most part, in a modest house presided over by a relative. He

wrote poetry now more carefully, for a wider audience, and every

few years saw another little volume added to his store: _Ballads

of New England_, _Miriam and Other Poems_, _Hazel

Blossoms_, _Poems of Nature_, _St. Gregory's Quest_,

_At Sundown_. When he died (1892) he was honored not so widely

perhaps as Longfellow, but more deeply, as we honor those whose

peace has been won through manful strife. Holmes, the ready poet of

all occasions, expressed a formal but sincere judgment in the

lines:

Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,

Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong:

A lifelong record closed without a stain,

A blameless memory shrined in deathless song.

EARLIER WORKS. [Footnote: Though we are concerned here with Whittier's

poetry, we should at least mention certain of his prose works, such as

_Legends of New England_, _Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal_

and _Old Portraits and Modern Sketches_. The chief value of these is

in their pictures of Colonial life.] In Whittier's poetry we note three

distinct stages, and note also that he was on the wrong trail until he

followed his own spirit. His earliest work was inspired by Burns, but this

was of no consequence. Next he fell under the spell of Scott and wrote

"Mogg Megone" and "The Bridal of Pennacook." These Indian romances in verse

are too much influenced by Scott's border poems and also by sentimental

novels of savage life, such as Mrs. Child's _Hobomok_; they do not

ring true, and in this respect are like almost everything else in

literature on the subject of the Indians.

[Sidenote: REFORM POEMS]

In _Voices of Freedom_ (1849) and other poems inspired by the

antislavery campaign Whittier for the first time came close to his own age.

He was no longer an echo but a voice, a man's voice, shouting above a

tumult. He spoke not for the nation but for a party; and it was inevitable

that his reform lyrics should fall into neglect with the occasions that

called them forth. They are interesting now not as poems but as sidelights

on a critical period of our history. Their intensely passionate quality

appears in "Faneuil Hall," "Song of the Free," "The Pine Tree," "Randolph

of Roanoke" and "The Farewell of an Indian Slave Mother."

There is a fine swinging rhythm in these poems, in "Massachusetts to

Virginia" especially, which recalls Macaulay's "Armada"; and two of them at

least show astonishing power and vitality. One is "Laus Deo," to which we

have referred in our story of the poet's life. The other is "Ichabod"

(1850), written after the "Seventh of March Speech" of Webster, when that

statesman seemed to have betrayed the men who elected and trusted him.

Surprise, anger, scorn, indignation, sorrow,--all these emotions were

loosed in a flood after Webster's speech; but Whittier waited till he had

fused them into one emotion, and when his slow words fell at last they fell

with the weight of judgment and the scorching of fire upon their victim. If

words could kill a man, these surely are the words. "Ichabod" is the most

powerful poem of its kind in our language; but it is fearfully unjust to

Webster. Those who read it should read also "The Lost Occasion," written

thirty years later, which Whittier placed next to "Ichabod" in the final

edition of his poems. So he tried to right a wrong (unfortunately after the

victim was dead) by offering generous tribute to the statesman he had once

misjudged.

BALLADS AND AMERICAN IDYLS. Whittier's manly heart and his talent for

flowing verse made him an excellent ballad writer; but his work in this

field is so different from that of his predecessors that he came near to

inventing a new type of poetry. Thus, many of the old ballads celebrate the

bravery that mounts with fighting; but Whittier always lays emphasis on the

higher quality that we call moral courage. "Barclay of Ury" will illustrate

our criticism: the verse has a martial swing; the hero is a veteran who has

known the lust of battle; but his courage now appears in self-mastery, in

the ability to bear in silence the jeers of a mob. Again, the old ballad

aims to tell a story, nothing else, and drives straight to its mark; but

Whittier portrays the whole landscape and background of the action. He

deals largely with Colonial life in New England, and his descriptions of

place and people are unrivaled in our poetry. Read one of his typical

ballads, "The Wreck of Rivermouth" or "The Witch's Daughter" or "The

Garrison of Cape Ann" or "Skipper Ireson's Ride," and see how closely he

identifies himself with the place and time of his story.

[Illustration: STREET IN OLD MARBLEHEAD

Skipper Ireson's home on extreme right]

[Sidenote: PATRIOTIC QUALITY]

There is one quality, however, in which our Quaker poet resembles the old

ballad makers, namely, his intense patriotism, and this recalls the fact

that ballads were the first histories, the first expression not only of

brave deeds but of the national pride which the deeds symbolized. Though

Whittier keeps himself modestly in the background, as a story teller ought

to do, he can never quite repress the love of his native land or the

quickened heartbeats that set his verse marching as if to the drums. This

patriotism, though intense, was never intolerant but rather sympathetic

with men of other lands, as appears in "The Pipes at Lucknow", a ballad

dealing with a dramatic incident of the Sepoy Rebellion. The Scotsman who

could read that ballad unmoved, without a kindling of the eye or a stirring

of the heart, would be unworthy of his clan or country.

Even better than Whittier's ballads are certain narrative poems reflecting

the life of simple people, to which we give the name of idyls. "Telling the

Bees," "In School Days," "My Playmate," "Maud Muller," "The Barefoot

Boy,"--there are no other American poems quite like these, none so tender,

none written with such perfect sympathy. Some of them are like photographs;

and the lens that gathered them was not a glass but a human heart. Others

sing the emotion of love as only Whittier, the Galahad of poets, could have

sung it,--as in this stanza from "A Sea Dream":

Draw near, more near, forever dear!

Where'er I rest or roam,

Or in the city's crowded streets,

Or by the blown sea foam,

The thought of thee is home!

SNOW-BOUND. The best of Whittier's idyls is _Snow-Bound_ (1866), into

which he gathered a boy's tenderest memories. In naming this as the best

poem in the language on the subject of home we do not offer a criticism but

an invitation. Because all that is best in human life centers in the ideal

of home, and because Whittier reflected that ideal in a beautiful way,

_Snow-Bound_ should be read if we read nothing else of American

poetry. There is perhaps only one thing to prevent this idyl from becoming

a universal poem: its natural setting can be appreciated only by those who

live within the snow line, who have seen the white flakes gather and drift,

confining every family to the circle of its own hearth fire in what Emerson

calls "the tumultuous privacy of storm."

The plan of the poem is simplicity itself. It opens with a description of a

snowstorm that thickens with the December night. The inmates of an old

farmhouse gather about the open fire, and Whittier describes them one by

one, how they looked to the boy (for _Snow-Bound_ is a recollection of

boyhood), and what stories they told to reveal their interests. The rest of

the poem is a reverie, as of one no longer a boy, who looks into his fire

and sees not the fire-pictures but those other scenes or portraits that are

graved deep in every human heart.

[Sidenote: CHARM OF SNOW-BOUND]

To praise such a work is superfluous, and to criticize its artless

sincerity is beyond our ability. Many good writers have explained the poem;

yet still its deepest charm escapes analysis, perhaps because it has no

name. The best criticism that the present writer ever heard on the subject

came from a Habitant farmer in the Province of Quebec, a simple, unlettered

man, who was a poet at heart but who would have been amazed had anyone told

him so. His children, who were learning English literature through the

happy medium of _Evangeline_ and _Snow-Bound_, brought the latter

poem home from school, and the old man would sit smoking his pipe and

listening to the story. When they read of the winter scenes, of the fire

roaring its defiance up the chimney-throat at the storm without,

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow,--

then he would stir in his chair, make his pipe glow fiercely, and blow a

cloud of smoke about his head. But in the following scene, with its

memories of the dead and its immortal hope, he would sit very still, as if

listening to exquisite music. When asked why he liked the poem his face

lighted: "W'y I lak heem, M'sieu Whittier? I lak heem 'cause he speak de

true. He know de storm, and de leetle _cabane_, and heart of de boy

an' hees moder. _Oui, oui_, he know de man also."

Nature, home, the heart of a boy and a man and a mother,--the poet who can

reflect such elemental matters so that the simple of earth understand and

love their beauty deserves the critic's best tribute of silence.

POEMS OF FAITH AND NATURE. Aside from the reform poems it is hard to group

Whittier's works, which are all alike in that they portray familiar scenes

against a natural background. In his _Tent on the Beach_ (1867) he

attempted a collection of tales in the manner of Longfellow's _Wayside

Inn_, but of these only one or two ballads, such as "Abraham Davenport"

and "The Wreck of Rivermouth," are now treasured. The best part of the book

is the "Prelude," which pictures the poet among his friends and records his

impressions of sky and sea and shore.

[Sidenote: TWO VIEWS OF NATURE]

The outdoor poems of Whittier are interesting, aside from their own beauty,

as suggesting two poetic conceptions of nature which have little in common.

The earlier regards nature as a mistress to be loved or a divinity to be

worshiped for her own sake; she has her own laws or mercies, and man is but

one of her creatures. The Anglo-Saxon scops viewed nature in this way; so

did Bryant, in whose "Forest Hymn" is the feeling of primitive ages. Many

modern poets (and novelists also, like Scott and Cooper) have outgrown this

conception; they regard nature as a kind of stage for the drama of human

life, which is all-important.

Whittier belongs to this later school; he portrays nature magnificently,

but always as the background for some human incident, sad or tender or

heroic, which appears to us more real because viewed in its natural

setting. Note in "The Wreck of Rivermouth," for example, how the merry

party in their sailboat, the mowers on the salt marshes, the "witch"

mumbling her warning, the challenge of a careless girl, the skipper's fear,

the river, the breeze, the laughing sea,--everything is exactly as it

should be. It is this humanized view of the natural world which makes

Whittier's ballads unique and which gives deeper meaning to his "Hampton

Beach," "Among the Hills," "Trailing Arbutus," "The Vanishers" and other of

his best nature poems.

[Sidenote: WHITTIER'S CREED]

Our reading of Whittier should not end until we are familiar with "The

Eternal Goodness," "Trust," "My Soul and I," "The Prayer of Agassiz" and a

few more of his hymns of faith. Our appreciation of such hymns will be more

sympathetic if we remember, first, that Whittier came of ancestors whose

souls approved the opening proposition of the Declaration of Independence;

and second, that he belonged to the Society of Friends, who believed that

God revealed himself directly to every human soul (the "inner light" they

called it), and that a man's primal responsibility was to God and his own

conscience. The creed of Whittier may therefore be summarized in two

articles: "I believe in the Divine love and in the equality of men." The

latter article appears in all his poems; the former is crystallized in "The

Eternal Goodness," a hymn so trustful and reverent that it might well be

the evensong of humanity.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITTIER. One may summarize Whittier in the statement

that he is the poet of the home and the hills, and of that freedom without

which the home loses its chief joy and the hill its inspiration. In writing

of such themes Whittier failed to win the highest honors of a poet; and the

failure was due not to his lack of culture, as is sometimes alleged (for

there is no other culture equal to right living), but rather to the stern

conditions of his life, to his devotion to duty, to his struggle for

liberty, to his lifelong purpose of helping men by his singing. Great poems

are usually the result of seclusion, of aloofness, but Whittier was always

a worker in the world.

[Sidenote: A NATURAL SINGER]

His naturalness is perhaps his best poetic virtue. There is in his verse a

spontaneous "singing" quality which leaves the impression that poetry was

his native language. It is easy to understand why Burns first attracted

him, for both poets were natural singers who remind us of what Bede wrote

of Cædmon: "He learned not the art of poetry from men." Next to his

spontaneity is his rare simplicity, his gift of speaking straight from a

heart that never grew old. Sometimes his simplicity is as artless as that

of a child, as in "Maud Muller"; generally it is noble, as in his modest

"Proem" to _Voices of Freedom_; occasionally it is passionate, as in

the exultant cry of "Laus Deo"; and at times it rises to the simplicity of

pure art, as in "Telling the Bees." The last-named poem portrays an old

Colonial custom which provided that when death came to a farmhouse the bees

must be told and their hives draped in mourning. It portrays also, as a

perfect, natural background, the path to Whittier's home and his sister's

old-fashioned flower garden, in which the daffodils still bloom where she

planted them long ago.

[Sidenote: THE MAN AND THE POET]

That Whittier was not a great poet, as the critics assure us, may be

frankly admitted. That he had elements of greatness is also without

question; and precisely for this reason, because his power is so often

manifest in noble or exquisite passages, there is disappointment in reading

him when we stumble upon bad rimes, careless workmanship, mishandling of

his native speech. Our experience here is probably like that of Whittier's

friend Garrison. The latter had read certain poems that attracted him; he

came quickly to see the poet; and out from under the barn, his clothes

sprinkled with hayseed, crawled a shy country lad who explained bashfully

that he had been hunting hens' nests. Anything could be forgiven after

that; interest in the boy would surely temper criticism of the poet.

Even so our present criticism of Whittier's verse must include certain

considerations of the man who wrote it: that he smacked of his native soil;

that his education was scanty and hardly earned; that he used words as his

father and mother used them, and was not ashamed of their rural accent. His

own experience, moreover, had weathered him until he seemed part of a

rugged landscape. He knew life, and he loved it. He had endured poverty,

and glorified it. He had been farm hand, shoemaker, self-supporting

student, editor of country newspapers, local politician, champion of

slaves, worker for reform, defender of a hopeless cause that by the awful

judgment of war became a winning cause. And always and everywhere he had

been a man, one who did his duty as he saw it, spake truth as he believed

it, and kept his conscience clean, his heart pure, his faith unshaken. All

this was in his verse and ennobled even his faults, which were part of his

plain humanity. As Longfellow was by study of European literatures the poet

of books and culture, so Whittier was by experience the poet of life. The

homely quality of his verse, which endears it to common men, is explained

on the ground that he was nearer than any other American poet to the body

and soul of his countrymen.

* * * * *

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891)

The work of Lowell is unusual and his rank or position hard to define.

Though never a great or even a popular writer, he was regarded for a

considerable part of his life as the most prominent man of letters in

America. At the present time his reputation is still large, but historians

find it somewhat easier to praise his works than to read them. As poet,

critic, satirist, editor and teacher he loomed as a giant among his

contemporaries, overtopping Whittier and Longfellow at one time; but he

left no work comparable to _Snow-Bound_ or _Hiawatha_, and one is

puzzled to name any of his poems or essays that are fairly certain to give

pleasure. To read his volumes is to meet a man of power and brilliant

promise, but the final impression is that the promise was not fulfilled,

that the masterpiece of which Lowell was capable was left unwritten.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Lowell came from a distinguished family that

had "made history" in America. His father was a cultured clergyman;

he grew up in a beautiful home, "Elmwood," in the college town of

Cambridge; among his first companions were the noble books that

filled the shelves of the family library. From the beginning,

therefore, he was inclined to letters; and though he often turned

aside for other matters, his first and last love was the love of

poetry.

At fifteen he entered Harvard, where he read almost everything, he

said, except the books prescribed by the faculty. Then he studied

law and opened an office in Boston, where he found few clients,

being more interested in writing verses than in his profession.

With his marriage in 1844 the first strong purpose seems to have

entered his indolent life. His wife was zealous in good works, and

presently Lowell, who had gayly satirized all reformers, joined in

the antislavery campaign and proceeded to make as many enemies as

friends by his reform poems.

[Illustration: JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL]

[Sidenote: VARIED TASKS]

Followed then a period of hard, purposeful work, during which he

supported himself by editing _The Pennsylvania Freeman_ and by

writing for the magazines. In 1848, his banner year, he published

his best volume of _Poems_, _Sir Launfal_, _A Fable for

Critics_ and the first series of _The Biglow Papers_. It

was not these volumes, however, but a series of brilliant lectures

on the English poets that caused Lowell to be called to the chair

in Harvard which Longfellow had resigned. He prepared for this work

by studying abroad, and for some twenty years thereafter he gave

courses in English, Italian, Spanish and German literatures. For a

part of this time he was also editor in turn of _The Atlantic

Monthly_ and _The North American Review_.

[Sidenote: LIFE ABROAD]

In the simpler days of the republic, when the first question asked

of a diplomat was not whether he had money enough to entertain

society in a proper style, the profession of letters was honored by

sending literary men to represent America in foreign courts, and

Lowell's prominence was recognized by his appointment as ambassador

to Spain (1877) and to England (1880). It was in this patriotic

service abroad that he won his greatest honors. In London

especially he made his power felt as an American who loved his

country, as a democrat who believed in democracy, and as a cultured

gentleman who understood Anglo-Saxon life because of his

familiarity with the poetry in which that life is most clearly

reflected. Next to keeping silence about his proper business,

perhaps the chief requirement of an ambassador is to make speeches

about everything else, and no other foreign speaker was ever

listened to with more pleasure than the witty and cultured Lowell.

One who summed up his diplomatic triumph said tersely that he found

the Englishmen strangers and left them all cousins.

He was recalled from this service in 1885. The remainder of his

life was spent teaching at Harvard, writing more poetry and editing

his numerous works. His first volume of poems, _A Year's

Life_, was published in 1841; his last volume, _Heartsease and

Rue_, appeared almost half a century later, in 1888. That his

death occurred in the same house in which he was born and in which

he had spent the greater part of his life is an occurrence so rare

in America that it deserves a poem of commemoration.

LOWELL'S POETRY. There are golden grains everywhere in Lowell's verse but

never a continuous vein of metal. In other words, even his best work is

notable for occasional lines rather than for sustained excellence. As a

specific example study the "Commemoration Ode," one of the finest poems

inspired by the Civil War. The occasion of this ode, to commemorate the

college students who had given their lives for their country, was all that

a poet might wish; the brilliant audience that gathered at Cambridge was

most inspiring; and beyond that local audience stood a nation in mourning,

a nation which had just lost a million of its sons in a mighty conflict. It

was such an occasion as Lowell loved, and one who reads the story of his

life knows how earnestly he strove to meet it. When the reading of his poem

was finished his audience called it "a noble effort," and that is precisely

the trouble with the famous ode; it is too plainly an effort. It does not

sing, does not overflow from a full heart, does not speak the inevitable,

satisfying word. In consequence (and perhaps this criticism applies to most

ambitious odes) we are rather glad when the "effort" is at an end. Yet

there are excellent passages in the poem, notably the sixth and the last

stanzas, one with its fine tribute to Lincoln, the other expressive of

deathless loyalty to one's native land.

[Sidenote: LYRICS]

The best of Lowell's lyrics may be grouped in two classes, the first

dealing with his personal joy or grief, the second with the feelings of the

nation. Typical of the former are "The First Snowfall" and a few other

lyrics reflecting the poet's sorrow for the loss of a little

daughter,--simple, human poems, in refreshing contrast with most others of

Lowell, which strive for brilliancy. The best of the national lyrics is

"The Present Crisis" (1844). This was at first a party poem, a ringing

appeal issued during the turmoil occasioned by the annexation of Texas; but

now, with the old party issues forgotten, we can all read it with pleasure

as a splendid expression of the American heart and will in every crisis of

our national history.

In the nature lyrics we have a double reflection, one of the external

world, the other of a poet who could not be single-minded, and who was

always confusing his own impressions of nature or humanity with those other

impressions which he found reflected in poetry. Read the charming "To a

Dandelion," for example, and note how Lowell cannot be content with his

Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

but must bring in Eldorado and twenty other poetic allusions to glorify a

flower which has no need of external glory. Then for comparison read

Bryant's "Fringed Gentian" and see how the elder poet, content with the

flower itself, tells you very simply how its beauty appeals to him. Or read

"An Indian-Summer Reverie" with its scattered lines of gold, and note how

Lowell cannot say what he feels in his own heart but must search everywhere

for poetic images; and then, because he cannot find exactly what he seeks

or, more likely, because he finds a dozen tempting allusions where one is

plenty, he goes on and on in a vain quest that ends by leaving himself and

his reader unsatisfied.

[Sidenote: SIR LAUNFAL]

The most popular of Lowell's works is _The Vision of Sir Launfal_

(1848), in which he invents an Arthurian kind of legend of the search for

the Holy Grail. Most of his long poems are labored, but this seems to have

been written in a moment of inspiration. The "Prelude" begins almost

spontaneously, and when it reaches the charming passage "And what is so

rare as a day in June?" the verse fairly begins to sing,--a rare occurrence

with Lowell. Critical readers may reasonably object to the poet's

moralizing, to his imperfect lines and to his setting of an Old World

legend of knights and castles in a New World landscape; but uncritical

readers rejoice in a moral feeling that is fine and true, and are content

with a good story and a good landscape without inquiring whether the two

belong together. Moreover, _Sir Launfal_ certainly serves the first

purpose of poetry in that it gives pleasure and so deserves its continued

popularity among young readers.

[Sidenote: SATIRES]

Two satiric poems that were highly prized when they were first published,

and that are still formally praised by historians who do not read them, are

_A Fable for Critics_ and _The Biglow Papers_. The former is a

series of doggerel verses filled with grotesque puns and quips aimed at

American authors who were prominent in 1848. The latter, written in a

tortured, "Yankee" dialect, is made up of political satires and conceits

occasioned by the Mexican and Civil wars. Both works contain occasional

fine lines and a few excellent criticisms of literature or politics, but

few young readers will have patience to sift out the good passages from the

mass of glittering rubbish in which they are hidden.

Much more worthy of the reader's attention are certain neglected works,

such as Lowell's sonnets, his "Prometheus," "Columbus," "Agassiz,"

"Portrait of Dante," "Washers of the Shroud," "Under the Old Elm" (with its

noble tribute to Washington) and "Stanzas on Freedom," It is a pity that

such poems, all of which contain memorable lines, should be kept from the

wide audience they deserve, and largely because of the author's

digressiveness. To examine them is to conclude that, like most of Lowell's

works, they are not simple enough in feeling to win ordinary readers, like

the poetry of Longfellow, and not perfect enough in form to excite the

admiration of critics, like the best of Poe's melodies.

[Illustration: LOWELL'S HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, IN WINTER]

LOWELL'S PROSE. In brilliancy at least Lowell has no peer among American

essayists, though others excel him in the better qualities of originality

or charm or vigor. The best of his prose works are the scintillating essays

collected in _My Study Window_ and _Among My Books_. In his

political essays he looked at humanity with his own eyes, but the titles of

the volumes just named indicate his chief interest as a prose writer, which

was to interpret the world's books rather than the world's throbbing life.

For younger readers the most pleasing of the prose works are the

comparatively simple sketches, "My Garden Acquaintance," "Cambridge Thirty

Years Ago" and "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners." In these

sketches we meet the author at his best, alert, witty and so widely read

that he cannot help giving literary flavor to whatever he writes. Among the

best of his essays on literary subjects are those on Chaucer, Dante Keats,

Walton and Emerson.

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF THE ESSAYS]

One who reads a typical collection of Lowell's essays is apt to be divided

between open admiration and something akin to resentment. On the one hand

they are brilliant, stimulating, filled with "good things"; on the other

they are always digressive, sometimes fantastic and too often

self-conscious; that is, they call our attention to the author rather than

to his proper subject. When he writes of Dante he is concerned to reveal

the soul of the Italian master; but when he writes of Milton he seems

chiefly intent on showing how much more he knows than the English editor of

Milton's works. When he presents Emerson he tries to make us know and

admire the Concord sage; but when he falls foul of Emerson's friends,

Thoreau and Carlyle, his personal prejudices are more in evidence than his

impersonal judgment. In consequence, some of the literary essays are a

better reflection of Lowell himself than of the men he wrote about.

An author must be finally measured, however, by his finest work, by his

constant purpose rather than by his changing mood; and the finest work of

Lowell, his critical studies of the elder poets and dramatists, are perhaps

the most solid and the most penetrating that our country has to show. He

certainly kept "the great tradition" in criticism, a tradition which

enjoins us, in simple language, to seek only the best and to reverence it

when we find it. As he wrote:

Great truths are portions of the soul of man;

Great souls are portions of eternity;

Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran

With lofty message, ran for thee and me.

* * * * *

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894)

It is a sad fate for a writer to be known as a humorist; nobody will take

him seriously ever afterward. Even a book suffers from such a reputation,

the famous _Don Quixote_ for example, which we read as a type of

extravagant humor but which is in reality a tragedy, since it portrays the

disillusionment of a man who believed the world to be like his own heart,

noble and chivalrous, and who found it filled with villainy. Because Holmes

(who was essentially a moralist and a preacher) could not repress the

bubbling wit that was part of his nature, our historians must set him down

as a humorist and name the "One-Hoss Shay" as his most typical work. Yet

his best poems are as pathetic as "The Last Leaf," as sentimental as "The

Voiceless," as patriotic as "Old Ironsides," as worshipful as the "Hymn of

Trust," as nobly didactic as "The Chambered Nautilus"; his novels are

studies of the obscure problems of heredity, and his most characteristic

prose work, _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, is an original

commentary on almost everything under the sun.

Evidently we prize a laugh above any other product of literature, and

because there is a laugh or a smile hidden in many a work of Holmes he must

still keep the place assigned to him as an "American" humorist. Even so, he

is perhaps our most representative writer in this field; for he is as

thoroughly American as a man can be, and his rare culture and kindness are

in refreshing contrast to the crude horseplay or sensationalism that is

unfortunately trumpeted abroad as New World humor.

A PLACID LIFE. Though Holmes never wrote a formal autobiography he

left a very good reflection of himself in his works, and it is in

these alone that we become acquainted with him,--a genial, witty,

observant, kind-hearted and pure-hearted man whom it is good to

know.

He belonged to what he called "the Brahmin caste" of intellectual

aristocrats (as described in his novel, _Elsie Venner_), for

he came from an old New England family extending back to Anne

Bradstreet and the governors of the Bay Colony. He was born in

Cambridge; he was educated at Andover and Harvard; he spent his

life in Boston, a city which satisfied him so completely that he

called it "the hub of the solar system." Most ambitious writers

like a large field with plenty of change or variety, but Holmes was

content with a small and very select circle with himself at the

center of it.

For his profession he chose medicine and studied it four years, the

latter half of the time in Paris. At that period his foreign

training was as rare in medicine as was Longfellow's in poetry. He

practiced his profession in Boston and managed to make a success of

it, though patients were a little doubtful of a doctor who wrote

poetry and who opened his office with the remark that "small

fevers" would be "gratefully received." Also he was for thirty-five

years professor of anatomy at the Harvard Medical School. What with

healing or teaching or learning, this doctor might have been very

busy; but he seems to have found plenty of leisure for writing, and

the inclination was always present. "Whoso has once tasted type" he

said, "must indulge the taste to the end of his life."

[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES]

[Sidenote: THE WRITER]

His literary work began at twenty-one, when he wrote "Old

Ironsides" in protest against the order to dismantle the frigate

_Constitution_, which had made naval history in the War of

1812. That first poem, which still rings triumphantly in our ears,

accomplished two things: it saved the glorious old warship, and it

gave Holmes a hold on public attention which he never afterward

lost. During the next twenty-five years he wrote poetry, and was so

much in demand to furnish verses for special occasions that he was

a kind of poet-laureate of his college and city. He was almost

fifty when the _Atlantic Monthly_ was projected and Lowell

demanded, as a condition of his editorship, that Holmes be engaged

as the first contributor. Feeling in the mood for talk, as he

commonly did, Holmes responded with _The Autocrat_. Thereafter

he wrote chiefly in prose, making his greatest effort in fiction

but winning more readers by his table talk in the form of essays.

His last volume, _Over the Teacups_, appeared when he was past

eighty years old.

[Sidenote: PET PREJUDICES]

We have spoken of the genial quality of Holmes as revealed in his

work, but we would hardly be just to him did we fail to note his

pet prejudices, his suspicion of reformers, his scorn of

homeopathic doctors, his violent antipathy to Calvinism. Though he

had been brought up in the Calvinistic faith (his father was an

old-style clergyman), he seemed to delight in clubbing or

satirizing or slinging stones at it. The very mildest he could do

was to refer to "yon whey-faced brother" to express his opinion of

those who still clung to puritanic doctrines. Curiously enough, he

still honored his father and was proud of his godly ancestors, who

were all stanch Puritans. The explanation is, of course, that

Holmes never understood theology, not for a moment; he only

disliked it, and was consequently sure that it must be wrong and

that somebody ought to put an end to it. In later years he mellowed

somewhat. One cannot truthfully say that he overcame his prejudice,

but he understood men better and was inclined to include even

reformers and Calvinists in what he called "the larger humanity

into which I was born so long ago."

WORKS OF HOLMES. In the field of "occasional" poetry, written to celebrate

births, dedications, feasts and festivals of every kind, Holmes has never

had a peer among his countrymen. He would have made a perfect

poet-laureate, for he seemed to rise to every occasion and have on his lips

the right word to express the feeling of the moment, whether of patriotism

or sympathy or sociability. In such happy poems as "The Boys," "Bill and

Jo," "All Here" and nearly forty others written for his class reunions he

reflects the spirit of college men who gather annually to live the "good

old days" over again. [Footnote: It may add a bit of interest to these

poems if we remember that among the members of the Class of '29 was Samuel

Smith, author of "America," a poem that now appeals to a larger audience

than the class poet ever dreamed of.] He wrote also some seventy other

poems for special occasions, the quality of which may be judged from "Old

Ironsides," "Under the Violets," "Grandmother's Story" and numerous

appreciations of Lowell, Burns, Bryant, Whittier and other well-known

poets.

Among poems of more general interest the best is "The Chambered Nautilus,"

which some read for its fine moral lesson and others for its beautiful

symbolism or almost perfect workmanship. Others that deserve to be

remembered are "The Last Leaf" (Lincoln's favorite), "Nearing the Snow

Line," "Meeting of the Alumni," "Questions and Answers" and "The

Voiceless,"--none great poems but all good and very well worth the reading.

[Sidenote: HUMOROUS POEMS]

"The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" is the most

popular of the humorous poems. Many readers enjoy this excellent skit

without thinking what the author meant by calling it "a logical story." It

is, in fact, the best pebble that he hurled from his sling against his

_bête noire_; for the old "shay" which went to pieces all at once was

a symbol of Calvinistic theology. That theology was called an iron chain of

logic, every link so perfectly forged that it could not be broken at any

point. Even so was the "shay" built, unbreakable in every single part; but

when the deacon finds himself sprawling and dumfounded in the road beside

the wrecked masterpiece the poet concludes:

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.

Logic is logic. That's all I say.

Other typical verses of the same kind are "The Height of the Ridiculous,"

"Daily Trials," "The Comet" and "Contentment." In the last-named poem

Holmes may have been poking fun at the Brook Farmers and other enthusiasts

who were preaching the simple life. Poets and preachers of this gospel in

every age are apt to insist that to find simplicity one must return to

nature or the farm, or else camp in the woods and eat huckleberries, as

Thoreau did; but Holmes remembered that some people must live in the city,

while others incomprehensibly prefer to do so, and wrote his "Contentment"

to express their idea of the simple life:

Little I ask; my wants are few;

I only wish a hut of stone

(A _very plain_ brown stone will do)

That I may call my own;

And close at hand is such a one,

In yonder street that fronts the sun.

I care not much for gold or land;

Give me a mortgage here and there,

Some good bank-stock, some note of hand,

Or trifling railroad share.

I only ask that Fortune send

A _little_ more than I shall spend.

[Sidenote: THE AUTOCRAT]

The most readable of the prose works is _The Autocrat of the Breakfast

Table_ (1858), a series of monologues in which Holmes, who was called

the best talker of his age, transferred his talk in a very charming way to

paper. As the book professes to record the conversation at the table of a

certain Boston boarding-house, it has no particular subject; the author

rambles pleasantly from one topic to another, illuminating each by his

wisdom or humor or sympathy. Other books of the same series are _The

Professor at the Breakfast Table_, _The Poet at the Breakfast

Table_ and _Over the Teacups_. Most critics consider _The

Autocrat_ the best and _The Poet_ second best of the series; but

there is a tender vein of sentiment and reminiscence in the final volume

which is very attractive to older readers.

The slight story element in the breakfast-table books probably led Holmes

to fiction, and he straightway produced three novels, _Elsie Venner_,

_The Guardian Angel_ and _A Mortal Antipathy_. These are studies

of heredity, of the physical element in morals, of the influence of mind

over matter and other subjects more suitable for essays than for fiction;

but a few mature readers who care less for a story than for an observation

or theory of life will find _The Guardian Angel_ an interesting novel.

And some will surely prize _Elsie Venner_ for its pictures of New

England life, its description of boarding school or evening party or social

hierarchy, at a time when many a New England family had traditions to which

it held as firmly and almost as proudly as any European court.

[Illustration: OLD COLONIAL DOORWAY

Holmes's birthplace, at Cambridge]

THE QUALITY OF HOLMES. The intensely personal quality of the works just

mentioned is their most striking characteristic; for Holmes always looks at

a subject with his own eyes, and measures its effect on the reader by a

previous effect produced upon himself. "If I like this," he says in

substance, "why, you must like it too; if it strikes me as absurd, you

cannot take any other attitude; for are we not both human and therefore

just alike?" It never occurred to Holmes that anybody could differ with him

and still be normal; those who ventured to do so found the Doctor looking

keenly at them to discover their symptoms. In an ordinary egoist or

politician or theologian this would be insufferable; but strange to say it

is one of the charms of Holmes, who is so witty and pleasant-spoken that we

can enjoy his dogmatism without the bother of objecting to it. In one of

his books he hints that talking to certain persons is like trying to pet a

squirrel; if you are wise, you will not imitate that frisky little beast

but assume the purring-kitten attitude while listening to the Autocrat.

[Sidenote: FIRST-HAND IMPRESSIONS]

Another interesting quality of Holmes is what we may call his rationalism,

his habit of taking nothing for granted, of judging every matter by

observation rather than by tradition or sentiment or imagination; and

herein he is in marked contrast with Longfellow and other romantic writers

of the period. We shall enjoy him better if we remember his bent of mind.

As a boy he was fond of tools and machinery; as a man he was interested in

photography, safety razors, inventions of every kind; as a physician he

rebelled against drugs (then believed to have almost magical powers, and

imposed on suffering stomachs in horrible doses) and observed his patients

closely to discover what mentally ailed them; and as boy or man or

physician he cared very little for books but a great deal for his own

observation of life. Hence there is always a surprise in reading Holmes,

which comes partly from his flashes of wit but more largely from his

independent way of looking at things and recording his first-hand

impressions. His _Autocrat_ especially is a treasure and ranks with

Thoreau's _Walden_ among the most original books of American

literature.

* * * * *

SIDNEY LANIER (1842-1881)

The name of Lanier is often associated with that of Timrod, and the two

southern poets were outwardly alike in that they struggled against physical

illness and mental depression; but where we see in Timrod the tragedy of a

poet broken by pain and neglect, the tragedy of Lanier's life is forgotten

in our wonder at his triumph. It is doubtful if any other poet ever raised

so pure a song of joy out of conditions that might well have occasioned a

wail of despair.

[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER]

The joyous song of Lanier is appreciated only by the few. He is not popular

with either readers or critics, and the difficulty of assigning him a place

or rank may be judged from recent attempts. One history of American

literature barely mentions Lanier in a slighting reference to "a small cult

of poetry in parts of America"; [Footnote: Trent, _History of American

Literature_ (1913), p. 471.] another calls him the only southern poet

who had a national horizon, and accords his work ample criticism;

[Footnote: Moses, _Literature of the South_ (1910), pp 358-383] a

third describes him as "a true artist" having "a lyric power hardly to be

found in any other American," but the brief record ends with the cutting

criticism that his work is "hardly national." [Footnote: Wendell,

_Literary History of America_ (1911), pp 495-498.] And so with all

other histories, one dismisses him as the author of a vague rhapsody called

"The Marshes of Glynn," another exalts him as a poet who rivals Poe in

melody and far surpasses him in thought or feeling. Evidently there is no

settled criticism of Lanier, as of Bryant or Longfellow; he is not yet

secure in his position among the elder poets, and what we record here is

such a personal appreciation as any reader may formulate for himself.

LIFE. America has had its Puritan and its Cavalier writers, but

seldom one who combines the Puritan's stern devotion to duty with

the Cavalier's joy in nature and romance and music. Lanier was such

a poet, and he owed his rare quality to a mixed ancestry. He was

descended on his mother's side from Scotch-Irish and Puritan

forbears, and on his father's side from Huguenot (French) exiles

who were musicians at the English court. One of his ancestors,

Nicholas Lanier, is described as "a musician, painter and engraver"

for Queen Elizabeth and King James, and as the composer of music

for some of Ben Jonson's masques.

[Sidenote: EARLY TRAITS]

His boyhood was spent at Macon, Georgia, where he was born in 1842.

A study of that boyhood reveals certain characteristics which

reappear constantly in the poet's work. One was his rare purity of

soul; another was his brave spirit; a third was his delight in

nature; a fourth was his passion for music. At seven he made his

first flute from a reed, and ever afterwards, though he learned to

play many instruments, the flute was to him as a companion and a

voice. With it he cheered many a weary march or hungry bivouac;

through it he told all his heart to the woman he loved; by it he

won a place when he had no other means of earning his bread. Hence

in "The Symphony," a poem which fronts one of life's hard problems,

it is the flute that utters the clearest and sweetest note.

[Sidenote: IN WAR TIME]

Lanier had finished his course in Oglethorpe University (a

primitive little college in Midway, Georgia) and was tutoring there

when the war came, and the college closed its doors because

teachers and students were away at the first call to join the army.

For four years he was a Confederate soldier, serving in the ranks

with his brother and refusing the promotion offered him for gallant

conduct in the field. There was a time during this period when he

might have sung like the minstrels of old, for romance had come to

him with the war. By day he was fighting or scouting with his life

in his hand; but when camp fires were lighted he would take his

flute and slip away to serenade the girl who "waited for him till

the war was over."

We mention these small incidents with a purpose. There is a

delicacy of feeling in Lanier's verse which might lead a reader to

assume that the poet was effeminate, when in truth he was as manly

as any Norse scald or Saxon scop who ever stood beside his chief in

battle. Of the war he never sang; but we find some reflection of

the girl who waited in the poem "My Springs."

[Sidenote: WAR'S AFTERMATH]

Lanier was at sea, as signal officer on a blockade runner, when his

ship was captured by a Federal cruiser and he was sent to the

military prison at Point Lookout (1864). A hard and bitter

experience it was, and his only comfort was the flute which he had

hidden in his ragged sleeve. When released the following year he

set out on foot for his home, five hundred miles away, and reached

it more dead than alive; for consumption had laid a heavy hand upon

him. For weeks he was desperately ill, and during the illness his

mother died of the same wasting disease; then he rose and set out

bravely to earn a living,--no easy matter in a place that had

suffered as Georgia had during the war.

[Sidenote: THE GLEAM]

We shall not enter into his struggle for bread, or into his

wanderings in search of a place where he could breathe without

pain. He was a law clerk in his father's office at Macon when,

knowing that he had but a slender lease of life, he made his

resolve. To the remonstrances of his father he closed his ears,

saying that music and poetry were calling him and he must follow

the call. The superb climax of Tennyson's "Merlin and the Gleam"

was in his soul:

O young mariner,

Down to the haven

Call your companions,

Launch your vessel

And crowd your canvas,

And, ere it vanishes

Over the margin,

After it, follow it,

Follow the Gleam!

Thus bravely he went northward to Baltimore, taking his flute with

him. He was evidently a wonderful artist, playing not by the score

but making his instrument his voice, so that his audience seemed to

hear a soul speaking in melody. His was a magic flute. Soon he was

supporting himself by playing in the Peabody Orchestra, living

joyously meanwhile in an atmosphere of music and poetry and books;

for he was always a student, determined to understand as well as to

practice his art. He wrote poems, stories, anything to earn an

honest dollar; he gave lectures on music and literature; he planned

a score of books that he did not and could not write, for he was

living in a fever of mind and body. Music and poetry were surging

within him for expression; but his strength was failing, his time

short.

[Sidenote: THE STRUGGLE]

In 1879 he was appointed lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, and

for the first time he had an assured income, small, indeed, but

very heartening since it was enough to support his family. He began

teaching with immense enthusiasm; but presently he was speaking in

a whisper from an invalid's chair. Under such circumstances were

uttered some of our most cheering words on art and poetry. Two

years later he died in a tent among the hills, near Asheville,

North Carolina, whither he had gone in a vain search for health.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF McGAHEYSVILLE, VIRGINIA

Near here Lanier spent his summers during the last years of his life]

There is in all Lanier's verse a fragmentariness, a sense of

something left unsaid, which we may understand better if we

remember that his heart was filled with the noblest emotions, but

that when he strove to write them his pen failed for weariness.

Read the daily miracle of dawn in "Sunrise," for example, and find

there the waiting oaks, the stars, the tide, the marsh with its

dreaming pools, light, color, fragrance, melody,--everything except

that the hand which wrote the poem was too weak to guide the

pencil. The rush of impressions and memories in "Sunrise," its

tender beauty and vague incompleteness, as of something left

unsaid, may be explained by the fact that it was Lanier's last

song.

WORKS OF LANIER. Many readers have grown familiar with Lanier's name in

connection with _The Boy's Froissart_, _The Boy's King Arthur_,

_The Boy's Mabinogion_ and _The Boy's Percy_, four books in which

he retold in simple language some of the old tales that are forever young.

His chief prose works, _The English Novel_ and _The Science of

English Verse_, are of interest chiefly to critics; they need not detain

us here except to note that the latter volume is devoted to Lanier's pet

theory that music and poetry are governed by the same laws. Of more general

interest are his scattered "Notes," which contain suggestions for many a

poem that was never written, intermingled with condensed criticisms. Of the

poet Swinburne he says, "He invited me to eat; the service was silver and

gold, but no food therein except salt and pepper." One might say less than

that with more words, or read a whole book to arrive at this summary of

Whitman's style and bottomless philosophy: "Whitman is poetry's butcher;

huge raw collops slashed from the rump of poetry, and never mind the

gristle, is what he feeds our souls with.... His argument seems to be that

because the Mississippi is long, therefore every American is a god."

[Sidenote: HIS BEST POEMS]

Those who read Lanier's poems should begin with the simplest, with his love

songs, "My Springs" and "In Absence," or his "Ballad of Trees and the

Master," or his outdoor poems, such as "Tampa Robins," "Song of the

Chattahoochee," "Mocking Bird," and "Evening Song." In the last-named

lyrics he began the work (carried out more fully in his later poems) of

interpreting in words the harmony which his sensitive ear detected in the

manifold voices of nature.

Next in order are the poems in which is hidden a thought or an ideal not to

be detected at first glance; for to Lanier poetry was like certain oriental

idols which when opened are found to be filled with exquisite perfumes.

"The Stirrup Cup" is one of the simplest of these allegories. It was a

custom in olden days when a man was ready to journey, for one who loved him

to bring a glass of wine which he drank in the saddle; and this was called

the stirrup or parting cup. In the cup offered Lanier was a rare cordial,

filled with "sweet herbs from all antiquity," and the name of the cordial

was Death:

Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt:

Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt;

'T is thy rich stirrup cup to me;

I'll drink it down right smilingly.

In four stanzas of "Night and Day" he compresses the tragedy of

_Othello_, not the tragedy that Shakespeare wrote but the tragedy that

was in the Moor's soul when Desdemona was gone. In "Life and Song" he

sought to express the ideal of a poet, and the closing lines might well be

the measure of his own heroic life:

His song was only living aloud,

His work a singing with his hand.

In "How Love Looked for Hell" the lesson is hidden deeper; for the profound

yet simple meaning of the poem is that, search high or low, Love can never

find hell because he takes heaven with him wherever he goes. Another poem

of the same class, but longer and more involved, is "The Symphony." Here

Lanier faces one of the greatest problems of the age, the problem of

industrialism with its false standards and waste of human happiness, and

his answer is the same that Tennyson gave in his later poems; namely, that

the familiar love in human hearts can settle every social question when

left to its own unselfish way:

Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it,

Plainly the heart of a child might solve it.

[Sidenote: MARSHES OF GLYNN]

The longer poems of Lanier are of uneven merit and are all more or less

fragmentary. The chief impression from reading the "Psalm of the West," for

example, is that it is the prelude to some greater work that was left

unfinished. More finely wrought and more typical of Lanier's mood and

method is "The Marshes of Glynn," his best-known work. It is a marvelous

poem, one of the most haunting in our language; yet it is like certain

symphonies in that it says nothing, being all feeling,--vague,

inexpressible feeling. Some readers find no meaning or satisfaction in it;

others hail it as a perfect interpretation of their own mood or emotion

when they stand speechless before the sunrise or the afterglow or a

landscape upon which the very spirit of beauty and peace is brooding.

THE QUALITY OF LANIER. In order to sympathize with Lanier, and so to

understand him, it is necessary to keep in mind that he was a musician

rather than a poet in our ordinary understanding of the term. In his verse

he used words, exactly as he used the tones of his flute, not so much to

express ideas as to call up certain emotions that find no voice save in

music. As he said, "Music takes up the thread that language drops," which

explains that beautiful but puzzling line which closes "The Symphony":

Music is Love in search of a word.

[Sidenote: MUSIC AND POETRY]

We have spoken of "The Symphony" as an answer to the problem of industrial

waste and sorrow, but it contains also Lanier's confession of faith;

namely, that social evils arise among men because of their lack of harmony;

and that spiritual harmony, the concord of souls which makes strife

impossible, may be attained through music. The same belief appears in

_Tiger Lilies_ (a novel written by Lanier in his early days), in which

a certain character makes these professions:

"To make a _home_ out of a household, given the raw

materials--to wit, wife, children, a friend or two and a house--two

other things are necessary. These are a good fire and good music.

And inasmuch as we can do without the fire for half the year, I may

say music is the one essential."

"Late explorers say they have found some nations that have no God;

but I have not read of any that had no music." "Music means

harmony, harmony means love, love means--God!"

One may therefore summarize Lanier by saying that he was poet who used

verbal rhythm, as a musician uses harmonious chords, to play upon our

better feelings. His poems of nature give us no definite picture of the

external world but are filled with murmurings, tremblings, undertones,--all

the vague impressions which one receives when alone in the solitudes, as if

the world were alive but inarticulate:

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-witholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man that hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

His poems of life have similar virtues and weaknesses: they are melodious;

they are nobly inspired; they appeal to our finest feelings; but they are

always vague in that they record no definite thought and speak no downright

message.

[Sidenote: LANIER AND WHITTIER]

The criticism may be more clear if we compare Lanier with Whittier, a man

equally noble, who speaks a language that all men understand. The poems of

the two supplement each other, one reflecting the reality of life, the

other its mysterious dreams. In Whittier's poetry we look upon a landscape

and a people, and we say, "I have seen that rugged landscape with my own

eyes; I have eaten bread with those people, and have understood and loved

them." Then we read Lanier's poetry and say, "Yes, I have had those

feelings at times; but I do not speak of them to others because I cannot

tell what they mean to me." Both poets are good, and both fail of greatness

in poetry, Whittier because he has no exalted imagination, Lanier because

he lacks primitive simplicity and strength. One poet sings a song to cheer

the day's labor, the other makes a melody to accompany our twilight

reveries.

* * * * *

"WALT" WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Since Whitman insisted upon being called "Walt" instead of Walter, so let

it be. The name accords with the free-and-easy style of his verse. If you

can find some abridged selections from that verse, read them by all means;

but if you must search the whole of it for the passages that are worth

reading, then pass it cheerfully by; for such another vain display of

egotism, vulgarity and rant never appeared under the name of poetry.

Whitman was so absurdly fond of his "chants" and so ignorant of poetry that

he preserved the whole of his work in a final edition, and his publishers

still insist upon printing it, rubbish and all. The result is that the few

rare verses which stamp him as a poet are apt to be overlooked in the

multitudinous gabblings which, of themselves, might mark him as a mere

freak or "sensation" in our modest literature.

[Illustration: WALT WHITMAN]

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Ordinarily when we read poetry we desire to

know something of the man who wrote it, of his youth, his training,

the circumstance of his work and the personal ideals which made him

view life steadily in one light rather than in another. In dealing

with Whitman it is advisable to leave such natural curiosity

unsatisfied, and for two reasons: first, the man was far from

admirable or upright, and to meet him at certain stages is to lose

all desire to read his poetry; and second, he was so extremely

secretive about himself, while professing boundless good-fellowship

with all men, that we can seldom trust his own record, much less

that of his admirers. There are great blanks in the story of his

life; his real biography has not yet been written; and in the

jungle of controversial writings which has grown up around him one

loses sight of Whitman in a maze of extravagant or contradictory

opinions. [Footnote: Of the many biographies of Whitman perhaps the

best for beginners is Perry's _Walt Whitman_ (1906), in

American Men of Letters Series.]

[Sidenote: TRAITS AND INCIDENTS]

Let it suffice then to record, in catalogue fashion, that Whitman

was born (1819) on Long Island, of stubborn farmer stock; that he

spent his earliest years by the sea, which inspired his best verse;

that he grew up in the streets of Brooklyn and was always

fascinated by the restless tide of city life, as reflected in such

poems as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"; that his education was scanty

and of the "picked up" variety; that to the end of his life, though

ignorant of what literary men regard as the _a-b-c_ of

knowledge, he was supremely well satisfied with himself; that till

he was past forty he worked irregularly at odd jobs, but was by

choice a loafer; that he was a man of superb physical health and

gloried in his body, without much regard for moral standards; that

his strength was broken by nursing wounded soldiers during the war,

a beautiful and unselfish service; that he was then a government

clerk in Washington until partly disabled by a paralytic stroke,

and that the remainder of his life was spent at Camden, New Jersey.

His _Leaves of Grass_ (published first in 1855, and

republished with additions many times) brought him very little

return in money, and his last years were spent in a state of

semipoverty, relieved by the gifts of a small circle of admirers.

WHITMAN'S VERSE. In a single book, _Leaves of Grass_, Whitman has

collected all his verse. This book would be a chaos even had he left his

works in the order in which they were written; but that is precisely what

he did not do. Instead, he enlarged and rearranged the work ten different

times, mixing up his worst and his best verses, so that it is now very

difficult to trace his development as a poet. We may, however, tentatively

arrange his work in three divisions: his early shouting to attract

attention (as summarized in the line "I sound my barbaric yawp over the

roofs of the world"), his war poems, and his later verse written after he

had learned something of the discipline of life and poetry.

The quality of his early work may be judged from a few disjointed lines of

his characteristic "Song of Myself":

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know

it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am

not contain'd between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,

The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,

The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,

The clear light plays on the brown, gray and green intertinged,

The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop of the load,

I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,

I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,

And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,

I tuck'd my trowser ends in my boots and went and had a good time;

You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

Thus he rambles on, gabbing of every place or occupation or newspaper

report that comes into his head. When he ends this grotesque "Song of

Myself" after a thousand lines or more, he makes another just like it. We

read a few words here and there, amazed that any publisher should print

such rubbish; and then, when we are weary of Whitman's conceit or bad

taste, comes a flash of insight, of imagination, of poetry:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are

they?

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight

expands my blood?

Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts

descend upon me?

There are, in short, hundreds of pages of such "chanting" with its grain of

wheat hid in a bushel of chaff. We refer to it here not because it is worth

reading but to record the curious fact that many European critics hail it

as typical American poetry, even while we wonder why anybody should regard

it as either American or poetic.

[Sidenote: FOREIGN OPINION]

The explanation is simple. Europeans have not yet rid themselves of the

idea that America is the strange, wild land Cooper's _Pioneers_, and

that any poetry produced here must naturally be uncouth, misshapen, defiant

of all poetic laws or traditions. To such critics Whitman's crudity seems

typical of a country where one is in nightly danger of losing his scalp,

where arguments are settled by revolvers, and where a hungry man needs only

to shoot a buffalo or a bear from his back door. Meanwhile America, the

country that planted colleges and churches in a wilderness, that loves

liberty because she honors law, that never saw a knight in armor but that

has, even in her plainsmen and lumberjacks, a chivalry for woman that would

adorn a Bayard,--that real America ignores the bulk of Whitman's work

simply because she knows that, of all her poets, he is the least

representative of her culture, her ideals, her heroic and aspiring life.

[Sidenote: DRUM TAPS]

The second division of Whitman's work is made up chiefly of verses written

in war time, to some of which he gave the significant title, _Drum

Taps_. In such poems as as "Beat, Beat, Drums," "Cavalry Crossing a

Ford" and "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame" he reflected the emotional

excitement of '61 and the stern days that followed. Note, for example, the

startling vigor of "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors," which depicts an old

negro woman by the roadside, looking with wonder on the free flag which she

sees for the first time aloft over marching men:

Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human,

With your woolly-white and turban'd head and bare bony feet?

Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

Another side of the war is reflected in such poems as "Come up from the

Fields, Father," an exquisite picture of an old mother and father receiving

the news of their son's death on the battlefield. In the same class belong

two fine tributes, "O Captain, My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the

Dooryard Bloomed," written in moments of noble emotion when the news came

that Lincoln was dead. The former tribute, with its rhythmic swing and

lyric refrain, indicates what Whitman might have done in poetry had he been

a more patient workman. So also does "Pioneers," a lyric that is wholly

American and Western and exultant:

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

[Sidenote: LATER POEMS]

In the third class of Whitman's works are the poems written late in life,

when he had learned to suppress his blatant egotism and to pay some little

attention to poetic form and melody. Though his lines are still crude and

irregular, many of them move to a powerful rhythm, such as the impressive

"With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea," which suggests the surge and beat of

breakers on the shore. In others he gives finely imaginative expression to

an ideal or a yearning, and his verse rises to high poetic levels. Note

this allegory of the spider, an insect that, when adrift or in a strange

place, sends out delicate filaments on the air currents until one thread

takes hold of some solid substance and is used as a bridge over the

unknown:

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my soul, where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect

them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul

[Illustration: WHITMAN'S BIRTHPLACE, WEST HILLS, LONG ISLAND]

Among the best of Whitman's works are his poems to death. "Joy, Shipmate,

Joy," "Death's Valley," "Darest Thou Now, O Soul," "Last Invocation,"

"Good-Bye, My Fancy,"--in such haunting lyrics he reflects the natural view

of death, not as a terrible or tragic or final event but as a confident

going forth to meet new experiences. Other notable poems that well repay

the reading are "The Mystic Trumpeter," "The Man-of-War Bird," "The Ox

Tamer," "Thanks in Old Age" and "Aboard at a Ship's Helm."

In naming the above works our purpose is simply to lure the reader away

from the insufferable Whitmanesque "chant" and to attract attention to a

few poems that sound a new note in literature, a note of freedom, of joy,

of superb confidence, which warms the heart when we hear it. When these

poems are known others will suggest themselves: "Rise, O Days, from Your

Fathomless Deeps," "I Hear America Singing," "There was a Boy Went Forth,"

"The Road Unknown," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." There is magic

in such names; but unfortunately in most cases the reader will find only an

alluring title and a few scattered lines of poetry; the rest is Whitman.

[Sidenote: DEMOCRACY]

The author of the "Song of Myself" proclaimed himself the poet of democracy

and wrote many verses on his alleged subject; but those who read them will

soon tire of one whose idea of democracy was that any man is as good, as

wise, as godlike as any other. Perhaps his best work in this field is "Thou

Mother with Thy Equal Brood," a patriotic poem read at "Commencement" time

in Dartmouth College (1872). There is too much of vainglorious boasting in

the poem (for America should be modest, and can afford to be modest), but

it has enough of prophetic vision and exalted imagination to make us

overlook its unworthy spread-eagleism.

[Sidenote: PRAYER OF COLUMBUS]

As a farewell to Whitman one should read what is perhaps his noblest single

work, "The Prayer of Columbus." The poem is supposed to reflect the thought

of Columbus when, as a worn-out voyager, an old man on his last expedition,

he looked out over his wrecked ships to the lonely sea beyond; but the

reader may see in it another picture, that of a broken old man in his

solitary house at Camden, writing with a trembling hand the lines which

reflect his unshaken confidence:

My terminus near,

The clouds already closing in upon me,

The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost,

I yield my ships to Thee

My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,

My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd;

Let the old timbers part, I will not part,

I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,

Thee, Thee at least I know.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?

What do I know of life? what of myself?

I know not even my own work past or present;

Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,

Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,

Mocking, perplexing me.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?

As if some miracle, some hand divine, unseal'd my eyes,

Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,

And on the distant waves sail countless ships,

And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

* * * * *

THE PROSE WRITERS

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Emerson is the mountaineer of our literature; to read him is to have the

impression of being on the heights. It is solitary there, far removed from

ordinary affairs; but the air is keen, the outlook grand, the heavens near.

Our companions are the familiar earth by day or the mysterious stars by

night, and these are good if only to recall the silent splendor of God's

universe amid the pother of human inventions. There also the very spirit of

liberty, which seems to have its dwelling among the hills, enters into us

and makes us sympathize with Emerson's message of individual freedom.

It is still a question whether Emerson should be classed with the poets or

prose writers, and our only reason for placing him with the latter is that

his "Nature" seems more typical than his "Wood Notes," though in truth both

works convey precisely the same message. He was a great man who used prose

or verse as suited his mood at the moment; but he was never a great poet,

and only on rare occasions was he a great prose writer.