John Greenleaf Whittier Part 4

The poem is the first ever published by the poet, and is his earliest known production.[11] The ma.n.u.script of it is now in the possession of Whittier's kinsman, Mr. S. T. Pickard, a.s.sociate editor of the _Portland Transcript_, in which journal it was republished November 27, 1880:--

THE DEITY.

The Prophet stood On the high mount and saw the tempest-cloud Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak Torn from the earth heaved high its roots where once Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely form Smote by the tempest lashed the mountain side; Yet, calm in conscious purity, the seer Beheld the awful devastation, for The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm.

The tempest ceased. The caverned earthquake burst Forth from its prison, and the mountain rocked Even to its base: The topmost crags were thrown With fearful crashing down its shuddering slopes.

Unawed the Prophet saw and heard: He felt Not in the earthquake moved the G.o.d of Heaven.

The murmur died away, and from the height, Torn by the storm and shattered by the shock, Rose far and clear a pyramid of flame, Mighty and vast! The startled mountain deer Shrank from its glare and cowered beneath the shade: The wild fowl shrieked; yet even then the seer Untrembling stood and marked the fearful glow-- For Israel's G.o.d came not within the flame.

The fiery beacon sank. A still small voice Now caught the Prophet's ear. Its awful tone, Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart.

Then bowed the holy man; his face he veiled Within his mantle, and in meekness owned The presence of his G.o.d, discovered not in The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty flame, But in the still small whisper to his soul.

[Footnote 11: See note on p. 301.]

It is characteristic of the man that his first poem should be of a religious nature. There is grandeur and majesty in the poem. The rhetoric is juvenile, but the diction is strong, nervous, and intense, and the general impression made upon the mind is one of harmony and solemn stateliness, not unlike that of "Thanatopsis," composed by Bryant when he was about the same age as was Whittier when he wrote "The Deity." It was probably owing to its anonymity that the first impulse of the editor was to throw it into the waste-basket. But as he glanced over the sheet his attention was caught: he read it, and some weeks afterward published it in the poet's corner. But in the interval of waiting the boy's heart sank within him. Every writer knows what he suffered. Did we not all expect that first precious production of ours to fairly set the editor wild with enthusiasm, so that nothing short of death or apoplexy could prevent him from a.s.signing it the most conspicuous position in the _very next issue_ of his paper?

But one day, as our boy-poet was mending a stone fence along the highway, in company with Uncle Moses, along came the postman on horseback, with his leathern bag of mail, like a magician with a Fortunatus' purse; and, to save the trouble of calling at the house, he tossed a paper to young Whittier. He opened it with eager fingers, and behold! his poem in the place of honor. He says that he was so dumfounded and dazed by the event that he could not read a word, but stood there staring at the paper until his uncle chided him for loitering, and so recalled him to his senses. Elated by his success, he of course sent other poems to the _Free Press_. They attracted the attention of Garrison so strongly that he inquired of the postman who it was that was sending him contributions from East Haverhill. The postman said that it was a "farmer's son named Whittier." Garrison decided to ride over on horseback, a distance of fifteen miles, and see his contributor. When he reached the farm, Whittier was at work in the field, and when told that there was a gentleman at the house who wanted to see him, he felt very much like "breaking for the brush," no one having ever called on him in that way before. However, he slipped in at the back door, made his toilet, and met his visitor, who told him that he had power as a writer, and urged him to improve his talents. The father came in during the conversation, and asked young Garrison not to put such ideas into the mind of his son, as they would only unfit him for his home duties. But, fortunately, it was too late: the spark of ambition had been fanned into a flame. Years afterward, in an introduction to Oliver Johnson's "William Lloyd Garrison and his Times,"

Mr. Whittier said: "My acquaintance with him [Garrison] commenced in boyhood. My father was a subscriber to his first paper, the _Free Press_, and the humanitarian tone of his editorials awakened a deep interest in our little household, which was increased by a visit he made us. When he afterwards edited the _Journal of the Times_, at Bennington, Vt., I ventured to write him a letter of encouragement and sympathy, urging him to continue his labors against slavery, and a.s.suring him that he could do great things." Indeed, the acquaintance thus begun ripened into the most intimate friendship and mutual respect. Mr. Whittier told the writer that when he went to Boston, in the winter of 1828-29, he and Garrison roomed and boarded at the same house. Mr. Whittier frequently contributed to the _Liberator_, and was for a quarter of a century a.s.sociated with Garrison in anti-slavery labors.

Before we pa.s.s with our young Quaker from the farm to the world at large, let us correct an erroneous statement that has been made about him. It has been said that he worked at the trade of shoemaking when a boy. The truth is that almost every farmer in those days was accustomed to do a little cobbling of his own, and what shoemaker's work Whittier performed was done by him solely as an amateur in his father's house.

In the year of his _debut_ as a poet (1826), he being then nineteen years of age, Whittier began attending the Haverhill Academy, or Latin School. Whether his parents were influenced to take this step for his advantage by the visit of the editor Garrison, and by his evident taste for learning, is not positively known, but it is quite possible that such was the case. In 1827 he read an original ode at the dedication of the new Academy. The building is still standing on Winter Street. While at the Academy he read history very thoroughly, and his writings show that it has always been a favorite study with him. He also contributed poems at this time to the _Haverhill Gazette_. Many of them were in the Scotch dialect: it would be interesting to see a few of these; but unfortunately no file of the _Gazette_ for those years can be found. A friendly rival in the writing of Scotch poems was good Robert Dinsmore, the "Farmer Poet of Windham," as Whittier calls him. A few specimens of Farmer Dinsmore's verse have been preserved. Take this on "The Sparrow":--

"Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow!

Why should my moul-board gie thee sorrow?

This day thou'll chirp, and mourn the morrow Wi' anxious breast; The plough has turned the mould'ring furrow Deep o'er thy nest!

Just i' the middle o' the hill Thy nest was placed wi' curious skill, There I espied thy little bill Beneath the shade.

In that sweet bower, secure frae ill, Thine eggs were laid.

Five corns o' maize had there been drappit, An' through the stalks thy head was pappit, The drawing nowt could na be stappit I quickly foun', Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit, Wild fluttering roun'.

The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer, In vain I tried the plough to steer, A wee bit stumpie i' the rear Cam 'tween my legs, An' to the jee-side gart me veer An' crush thine eggs."

The following elegiac stanza, written by honest Robert on the occasion of the death of his wife, is irresistibly ludicrous:--

"No more may I the Spring Brook trace, No more with sorrow view the place Where Mary's wash-tub stood; No more may wander there alone, And lean upon the mossy stone, Where once she piled her wood.

'T was there she bleached her linen cloth, By yonder ba.s.s-wood tree; From that sweet stream she made her broth, Her pudding and her tea."

Mr. Whittier says that the last time he saw Robert, "Threescore years and ten," to use his own words,

'Hung o'er his back, And bent him like a muckle pack,'

yet he still stood stoutly and st.u.r.dily in his thick shoes of cowhide, like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,--his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to all the 'airts that blow,' and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as a child, and betraying neither in look nor manner that he was accustomed to

'Feed on thoughts which voluntary move Harmonious numbers.'"

CHAPTER IV.

EDITOR AND AUTHOR: FIRST VENTURES.

The winter of 1828-29 was pa.s.sed by Whittier in Boston. He once with characteristic modesty told the writer that he drifted into journalism that winter, as editor of the _American Manufacturer_, in the following way: He had gone to Boston to study and read. He undertook the writing for the _Manufacturer_ not because he had much liking for questions of tariff and finance, but because his own finances would thereby be improved. Mr. Whittier's chief personal trait is extreme shyness and distrust of himself, and he deprecated the idea that he had any special power as a writer at the time of which we are speaking, saying that he had to study up his subjects before writing. But undoubtedly he must have wielded a vigorous pen, and been known to possess a cool and careful head, or he would not have been invited to a.s.sume the editorship of such a paper. He himself admitted, in the course of the conversation, that at that time he had political ambitions, and made a study of political economy and civil politics.

In 1830 we find Whittier at Haverhill again. In March of that year he was occupying the position of editor of the _Ess.e.x Gazette_, and "issued proposals to publish a 'History of Haverhill,' in one volume of two hundred pages, duodecimo, price eighty-seven and one-half cents per copy. 'If the material swelled the volume above two hundred pages, the price was to be one dollar per copy.'" But the limited encouragement offered, and the amount of work required to compile the volume, led the young editor to abandon the project. Whittier was editor of this _Gazette_ for six months,--from January 1 to July 10, 1830. On May 4, 1836, after he had returned from Philadelphia, he resumed the editorship of the journal, retaining the position until December 17 of the same year.

He left the _Gazette_ at the time of his first connection with it, to go to Hartford for the purpose of editing the _New England Weekly Review_ of that city. His first acquaintance with this Connecticut periodical had been made while attending the Academy at Haverhill. While there he happened to see a copy of the _Review_, then edited by George D.

Prentice. He was pleased with its sprightly and breezy tone, and sent it several articles. Great was his astonishment on finding that they were accepted and published with editorial commendation. He sent numerous other contributions during the same year.

One day in 1830, he was at work in the field, when a letter was brought to him from the publishers of the Hartford paper, in which they said that they had been asked by Mr. Prentice to request him to edit the paper during the absence of Mr. Prentice in Kentucky, whither he had gone to write a campaign life of Henry Clay. "I could not have been more utterly astonished," said Mr. Whittier once, "if I had been told that I was appointed prime minister to the great Khan of Tartary."

Mr. Whittier was at this time a member of the National Republican party. He afterward belonged to the anti-slavery Liberty party, a faction of the Abolitionists which had separated from the Garrison band.

In 1855 Mr. Whittier acted with the Free Democratic party. In the conversation alluded to a moment ago, the poet laughingly remarked that the proprietors of the paper had never seen him when he went to Hartford in 1830 to take charge of their periodical. They were much surprised at his youth. But at the first meeting he discreetly kept silence, letting them do most of the talking. Here most a.s.suredly, if never again, his Quaker doctrine of silence stood him in good stead; since, if we may believe him, he was most wofully deficient in a knowledge of the intricacies of the political situation of the time.

Whittier was twenty-four years old when he published his first volume.

It is a thin little book ent.i.tled "Legends of New England" (Hartford: Hanmer and Phelps, 1831), and is a medley of prose and verse. The style is juvenile and extravagantly rhetorical, and the subject-matter is far from being ma.s.sive with thought. The libretto has been suppressed by its author, and it would be ungracious as well as unjust to criticise it at any length, or quote more than a single morsel of its verses, which are inferior to the prose. But one may be pardoned for giving two or three specimens of the prose stories, for they are intrinsically interesting. In the preface we have a striking pa.s.sage, which may be commended to those who accuse Whittier of hatred of the Puritan fathers, and undue partiality toward the Quakers. He says: "I have in many instances alluded to the superst.i.tion and bigotry of our ancestors, the rare and bold race who laid the foundation of this republic; but no one can accuse me of having done injustice to their memories. A son of New England, and proud of my birthplace, I would not willingly cast dishonor upon its founders. My feelings in this respect have already been expressed in language which I shall be pardoned, I trust, for introducing in this place:--

Oh!--never may a son of thine, Where'er his wandering steps incline, Forget the sky which bent above His childhood like a dream of love, The stream beneath the green hill flowing, The broad-armed tree above it growing, The clear breeze through the foliage blowing; Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn, Breathed o'er the brave New England born; Or mark the stranger's jaguar hand Disturb the ashes of thy dead-- The buried glory of a land Whose soil with n.o.ble blood is red, And sanctified in every part, Nor feel resentment, like a brand, Unsheathing from his fiery heart!"

The flow of language in these prose pieces is smooth and easy, and the narratives are in the same vein and style as the "Twice Told Tales," or Irving's stories, only they are very much weaker than these, and more extravagant and melodramatic in tone. "The Midnight Attack" describes the adventure of Captain Harmon and thirty Eastern rangers on the banks of the Kennebec River in June, 1722. A party of sleeping Indians are surprised by them and all shot dead by one volley of b.a.l.l.s. An idea of the style of the piece will be obtained from the following paragraphs.

The men are waiting for the signal of Harmon:--

"'Fire!' he at length exclaimed, as the sight of his piece interposed full and distinct between his eye and the wild scalp-lock of the Indian. 'Fire, and rush on!'

"The sharp voice of thirty rifles thrilled through the heart of the forest. There was a groan--a smothered cry--a wild and convulsive movement among the sleeping Indians; and all again was silent.

"The rangers sprang forward with their clubbed muskets and hunting knives; but their work was done. The red men had gone to their audit before the Great Spirit; and no sound was heard among them save the gurgling of the hot blood from their lifeless bosoms."

It was one of the superst.i.tions of the New England colonists that the rattlesnake had the power of charming or fascinating human beings.

Whittier's story, "The Rattlesnake Hunter," is based upon this fact. An old man with meagre and wasted form is represented as devoting his life to the extermination of the reptiles among the hills and mountains of Vermont, the inspiring motive of his action being the death of his young and beautiful wife, many years previously, from the bite of a rattlesnake.

"The Human Sacrifice" relates the escape of a young white girl from the hands of the Matchit-Moodus, an Indian tribe formerly dwelling where East Haddam now stands. The Indians are frightened from their purpose of sacrificing the girl by a rumbling noise proceeding from a high hill near by. In his note on the story Mr. Whittier says: "There is a story prevalent in the neighborhood, that a man from England, a kind of astrologer or necromancer, undertook to rid the place of the troublesome noises. He told them that the sound proceeded from a carbuncle--a precious gem, _growing in the bowels of the rock_. He hired an old blacksmith shop, and worked for some time with closed doors, and at night. All at once the necromancer departed, and the strange noises ceased. It was supposed he had found the precious gem, and had fled with it to his native land." This story of the carbuncle reminds us of Hawthorne's story on the same subject.

The following remarks are prefixed to the poem, "The Unquiet Sleeper": "Some fifty or sixty years since an inhabitant of ----, N. H., was found dead at a little distance from his dwelling, which he left in the morning in perfect health. There is a story prevalent among the people of the neighborhood that, on the evening of the day on which he was found dead, strange cries are annually heard to issue from his grave! I have conversed with some who really supposed they had heard them in the dead of the night, rising fearfully on the autumn wind. They represented the sounds to be of a most appalling and unearthly nature."

"The Spectre Ship" is the versification of a legend related in Mather's "Magnalia Christi." A ship sailed from Salem, having on board "a young man of strange and wild appearance, and a girl still younger, and of surpa.s.sing beauty. She was deadly pale, and trembled even while she leaned on the arm of her companion." They were supposed by some to be demons. The vessel was lost, and of course soon reappeared as a spectre-ship.

Mr. Whittier's next work was the editing, in 1832, of the "Remains" of his gifted friend, J. G. C. Brainard. Students of Whittier's poems know that for many years the genius and writings of Brainard exercised a potent influence on his mind. Brainard undoubtedly possessed genius. He was at one time editor of the _Connecticut Mirror_. He died young, and his work can be considered as hardly more than a promise of future excellence. Whittier, in his Introduction to the "Remains," shows a nice sense of justice, and a delicate reserve in his eulogistic estimate of his dead brother-poet and friend. That he did not falsely attribute to him a rare genius will be evident to those who read the following portion of Brainard's spirited ballad of "The Black Fox":--