John Greenleaf Whittier Part 13

In plan the poem is like the "Decameron," the "Princess," the "Canterbury Tales," and "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The different portions are supposed to be related by five persons,--a lawyer, a clergyman, a merchant and his daughter, and the poet,--who are all sight-seeing in the White Mountains. The opening description, in blank verse, conveys a vague but not very powerful impression of sublimity. The musical nomenclature of the red aborigines is finely handled, and such words as Pennacook, Babboosuck, Contoocook, Bashaba, and Weetamoo chime out here and there along the pages with as silvery a sweetness as the Tuscan words in Macaulay's "Lays." At the wedding of Weetamoo we have--

"Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, Cranberries picked from the Squamscot bog, And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:

And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands In the river scooped by a spirit's hands, Garnished with spoons of sh.e.l.l and horn, Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn."

The following stanza on the heroine, Weetamoo, is a fine one:--

"Child of the forest!--strong and free, Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair, She swam the lake, or climbed the tree, Or struck the flying bird in air.

O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way; And, dazzling in the summer noon, The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray!"

The "Song of Indian Women," at the close of "The Bridal of Pennacook,"

is admirable for melody, weird and wild beauty, and naturalness. It is a lament for the lost Weetamoo, who, unfortunate in her married life, has committed suicide by sailing over the rapids in her canoe:--

"The Dark Eye has left us, The Spring-bird has flown; On the pathway of spirits She wanders alone.

The song of the wood-dove has died on our sh.o.r.e,-- _Mat wonck kunna-monee!_--We hear it no more!

O mighty Sowanna!

Thy gateways unfold, From thy wigwams of sunset Lift curtains of gold!

Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er,-- _Mat wonck kunna-monee!_--We see her no more!"

There are two minor Indian poems by Whittier that have the true ring; namely, the "Truce of Piscataqua" and "Funeral Tree of the Sokokis." The latter well-known poem is pitched in as high and solemn a key as Platen's "Grab im Busento," a poem similar in theme to Whittier's:--

"They heave the stubborn trunk aside, The firm roots from the earth divide,-- The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.

And there the fallen chief is laid, In ta.s.selled garbs of skins arrayed, And girded with his wampum-braid."

_Whittier._

"In der wogenleeren Hohlung wuhlten sie empor die Erde, Senkten tief hinein den Leichnam, mit der Rustung auf dem Pferde.

Deckten dann mit Erde wieder ihn und seine stolze Habe."

_Platen._

In the empty river-bottom hurriedly they dug the death-pit, Deep therein they sank the hero with his armor and his war-steed, Covered then with earth and darkness him and all his splendid trappings.

When the reader, who has worked gloomily along through Whittier's anti-slavery and miscellaneous poems, reaches the "Songs of Labor," he feels at once the breath of a fresher spirit,--as a traveller who has been toiling for weary leagues through sandy deserts bares his brow with delight to the coolness and shade of a green forest through whose thick roof of leaves the garish sunlight scarcely sifts. We feel that in these poems a new departure has been made. The wrath of the reformer has expended itself, and the poet now returns, with mind elevated and more tensely keyed by his moral warfare, to the study of the beautiful in native themes and in homely life. "The Shipbuilders," "The Shoemakers,"

"The Fishermen," and "The Huskers" are genuine songs; and more shame to the craftsmen celebrated if they do not get them set to music, and sing them while at their work. One cannot help feeling that Walt Whitman's call for some one to make songs for American laborers had already been met in a goodly degree by these spirited "Songs of Labor." What workman would not be glad to carol such stanzas as the following, if they were set to popular airs?

"Hurrah! the seaward breezes Sweep down the bay amain; Heave up, my lads, the anchor!

Run up the sail again!

Leave to the lubber landsmen The rail-car and the steed: The stars of heaven shall guide us, The breath of heaven shall speed."

_The Fishermen._

"Ho! workers of the old time styled The Gentle Craft of Leather!

Young brothers of the ancient guild, Stand forth once more together!

Call out again your long array, In the olden merry manner!

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, Fling out your blazoned banner!

Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone How falls the polished hammer!

Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor.

Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glossy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!"

_The Shoemakers._

The publication of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life,"

in 1853, marks (as has been said) the period of culture and of religious doubt,--doubt which ended in trust. In this period we have such genuine undidactic poems as "The Barefoot Boy."

"Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace."

Also, such fine poems as "Flowers in Winter" and "To My Old Schoolmaster;" as well as the excellent ballads, "Maud Muller,"

"Kathleen," and "Mary Garvin."

The period in Whittier's life from about 1858 to 1868 we may call the Ballad Decade,[26] for within this time were produced most of his immortal ballads. We say immortal, believing that if all else that he has written shall perish, his finest ballads will carry his name down to a remote posterity. "The Tent on the Beach" is mainly a series of ballads; and "Snow-Bound," although not a ballad, is still a narrative poem closely allied to that species of poetry, the difference between a ballad and an idyl being that one is made to be sung and the other to be read: both narrate events as they occur, and leave to the reader all sentiment and reflection.

[Footnote 26: The beginning of this decade nearly coincides with the fourth or final period in our cla.s.sification, upon the consideration of which we shall now enter.]

The finest ballads of Whittier have the power of keeping us in breathless suspense of interest until the _denouement_ or the catastrophe, as the case may be. The popularity of "Maud Muller" is well deserved. What a rich and mellow translucence it has! How it appeals to the universal heart! And yet "The Witch's Daughter" and "Telling the Bees" are more exquisite creations than "Maud Muller": they have a spontaneity, a subtle pathos, a sublimated sweetness of despair that take hold of the very heart-strings, and thus deal with deeper emotions than such light, objective ballads as "Maud Muller" and "Skipper Ireson's Ride." But the surface grace of the two latter have of course made them the more popular, just as the "Scarlet Letter" finds greater favor with most people than does "The House of the Seven Gables,"

although Hawthorne rightly thought the "Seven Gables" to be his finest and subtlest work.

Mark the Chaucerian freshness of the opening stanzas of "The Witch's Daughter":--

"It was the pleasant harvest time, When cellar-bins are closely stowed, And garrets bend beneath their load,

And the old swallow-haunted barns-- Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams Through which the moted sunlight streams.

And winds blow freshly in, to shake The red plumes of the roosted c.o.c.ks, And the loose hay-mow's scented locks--

Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous gra.s.s and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves."

A companion ballad to "The Witch's Daughter" is "The Witch of Wenham," a poem almost equal to it in merit, and like it ending happily. These ballads do not quite attain the almost supernatural simplicity of Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" and "We are Seven"; but they possess an equal interest, excited by the same poetical qualities. "Telling the Bees,"

however, seems to the writer as purely Wordsworthian as anything Wordsworth ever wrote:--

"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

How the tears spring to the eyes in reading this immortal little poem!

The bee-hives ranged in the garden, the sun "tangling his wings of fire in the trees," the dog whining low, the old man "with his cane to his chin,"--we all know the scene: its every feature appeals to our sympathies and a.s.sociations.