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She starts, she moves,

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350 The thrill of life along her keel,

And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!

And lo! from the assembled crowd
355 There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,

“Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!"

360 How beautiful she is! How fair

She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!

365 Through wind and wave, right onward steer The moistened eye, the trembling lip,

Are not the signs of doubt or fear.

Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
370 And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
375 And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

380 With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
385 What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 390 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 395 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee,

are all with thee!

393. The reference is to the treacherous display, by wreckers, of lights upon a dangerous coast, to attract vessels in a storm, that they may be wrecked and become the spoil of the thieves.

398. The closing lines gather into strong verses, like a choral, the cumulative meaning of the poem, which builds upon the material structure of the ship, the fancy of the bridal of sea and ship, the domestic life of man and the national life.

Mr. Noah Brooks, in his paper on Lincoln's Imagination (Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879), mentions that he found the President one day attracted by these closing stanzas, which were quoted in a political speech: "Knowing the whole poem," he adds, "as one of my early exercises in recitation, I began, at his request, with the description of the launch of the ship, and repeated it to the end. As he listened to the last lines [395-398]. his eyes filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some minutes, but finally said, with simplicity: 'It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir men like that.'"

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

J

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

OHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, of Quaker birth in Puritan surroundings, was born at the homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, working upon the farm and in the little shoemaker's shop which nearly every farm then had as a resource in the otherwise idle hours of winter. The manual, homely labor upon which he was employed was in part the foundation of that deep interest which the poet never has ceased to take in the toil and plain fortunes of the people. Throughout his poetry runs this golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and enforced poverty, and many poems are directly inspired by it. While at work with his father he sent poems to the Haverhill Gazette, and that he was not in subjection to his work is very evident by the fact that he translated it and similar occupations into Songs of Labor. He had two years academic training, and in 1829 became editor in Boston of the American Manufacturer, a paper published in the interest of the tariff. In 1831 he published his Legends of

New England, prose sketches in a department of literature which has always had strong claims upon his interest. No American writer, unless Irving be excepted, has done so much to throw a graceful veil of poetry and legend over the country of his daily life. Essex County in Massachusetts, and the beaches lying between Newburyport and Portsmouth, blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting. He has made rare use of the homely stories which he had heard in his childhood, and learned afterward from familiar intercourse with country people, and he has himself used invention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the New England coast. Although of a body of men who in earlier days had been persecuted by the Puritans of New England, his generous mind has not failed to detect all the good that was in the stern creed and life of the persecutors, and to bring it forward into the light of his poetry.

In 1836 he published Mogg Megone, a poem which stands first in the collected edition of his poems, and was admitted there with some reluc tance, apparently, by the author. In that and the Bridal of Pennacook he draws his material from the relation held between the Indians and the settlers. His sympathy was always with the persecuted and oppressed, and while historically he found an object of pity and self-reproach in the Indian, his profoundest compassion and most stirring indignation were called out by African slavery. From the earliest he was upon the side of the ab

olition party. Year after year poems fell from his pen in which with all the eloquence of his nature he sought to enlist his countrymen upon the side of emancipation and freedom. It is not too much to say that in the slow development of public sentiment Whittier's steady song was one of the most powerful advocates that the slave had, all the more powerful that it was free from malignity or unjust accusation.

Whittier's poems have been issued in a number of small volumes, and collected into single larger volumes. Besides those already indicated, there are a number which owe their origin to his tender regard for domestic life and the simple experience of the men and women about him. Of these SnowBound is the most memorable. Then his fondness for a story has led him to use the ballad form in many cases, and Mabel Martin is one of a number, in which the narrative is blended with a fine and strong charity. The catholic mind of this writer and his instinct for discovering the pure moral in human action are disclosed by a number of poems, drawn from a wide range of historical fact, dealing with a great variety of religious faiths and circumstances of life, but always pointing to some sweet and strong truth of the divine life. Of such are The Brother of Mercy, The Gift of Tritemius, The Two Rabbis, and others. Whittier's Prose Works are comprised in two volumes, and consist mainly of his contributions to journals and of Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, a fictitious diary of a visitor to New England in 1678.

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