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The Complete Works of Whittier

J >> John Greenleaf Whittier >> The Complete Works of Whittier



This eBook was produced by David Widger





THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER


VOLUME I.

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY

POEMS

BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER



PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT

The Standard Library Edition of Mr. Whittier's writings comprises his
poetical and prose works as re-arranged and thoroughly revised by
himself or with his cooperation. Mr. Whittier has supplied such
additional information regarding the subject and occasion of certain
poems as may be stated in brief head-notes, and this edition has been
much enriched by the poet's personal comment. So far as practicable the
dates of publication of the various articles have been given, and since
these were originally published soon after composition, the dates of
their first appearance have been taken as determining the time at which
they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has
allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be
placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the
final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so
complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will
always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers
congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which
Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has
resulted in so comprehensive and well-adjusted a collection.

The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a
view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The
original sources and dates are indicated in each case.




NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS.


CONTENTS:

THE VAUDOIS TEACHER
THE FEMALE MARTYR
EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND"
THE DEMON OF THE STUDY
THE FOUNTAIN
PENTUCKET
THE NORSEMEN
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS
ST JOHN
THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON
THE EXILES
THE KNIGHT OF ST JOHN
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK
THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK
I. THE MERRIMAC
II. THE BASHABA
III. THE DAUGHTER
IV. THE WEDDING
V. THE NEW HOME
VI. AT PENNACOOK
VII. THE DEPARTURE
VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN

BARCLAY OF URY
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
THE LEGEND OF ST MARK
KATHLEEN
THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS
TAULER
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
THE SYCAMORES
THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW
TELLING THE BEES
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY

MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL
PROEM
I. THE RIVER VALLEY
II. THE HUSKING
III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER
IV. THE CHAMPION
V. IN THE SHADOW
VI. THE BETROTHAL

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL
THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR
THE PREACHER
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA
MY PLAYMATE
COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION
AMY WENTWORTH
THE COUNTESS

AMONG THE HILLS
PRELUDE
AMONG THE HILLS

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL
THE TWO RABBINS
NOREMBEGA
MIRIAM
MAUD MULLER
MARY GARVIN
THE RANGER
NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON
THE SISTERS
MARGUERITE
THE ROBIN

THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
PRELUDE
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM

KING VOLMER AND ELSIE
THE THREE BELLS
JOHN UNDERHILL
CONDUCTOR BRADLEY
THE WITCH OF WENHAM
KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS
IN THE "OLD SOUTH"
THE HENCHMAN
THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK
THE KHAN'S DEVIL
THE KING'S MISSIVE
VALUATION
RABBI ISHMAEL
THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE

THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
To H P S
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS

THE WISHING BRIDGE
HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER
ST GREGORY'S GUEST
CONTENTS
BIRCHBROOK MILL
THE TWO ELIZABETHS
REQUITAL
THE HOMESTEAD
HOW THE ROBIN CAME
BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS
THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN




NOTE.-The portrait prefixed to this volume was etched by
S. A. Schoff, in 1888, after a painting by Bass Otis, a pupil of
Gilbert Stuart, made in the winter of 1836-1837.




PROEM

I LOVE the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature's face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seer-like power to show
The secrets of the heart and mind;
To drop the plummet-line below
Our common world of joy and woe,
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.

Yet here at least an earnest sense
Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.

O Freedom! if to me belong
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
Still with a love as deep and strong
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.

AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847.



INTRODUCTION

The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note
by way of preface:--

"In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my
poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that
these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but
regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that
attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the
opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand.

"That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let
die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I
must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins.
There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times,
which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which
they were written, and the events by which they were suggested.

"The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early
life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such
as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period."

After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been
requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and
revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added
much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors
and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore
unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed
necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few
general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the
Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored
to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible.

In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional
prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have
neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction.

Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of
poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an
artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the
earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and
feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and
Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive
the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm
signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart,
forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful
word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might
have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the
Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If
their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of
Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In
attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison,
"a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the
contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery
and not of slave-masters.

"No common wrong provoked our zeal,
The silken gauntlet which is thrown
In such a quarrel rings like steel."

Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the
Notes on Virginia, says "It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the
subject of Slavery." After the great contest was over, no class of the
American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of
harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the
Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast
increasing prosperity of the South.

Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my
writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I
care to re-publish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been
left solely to myself, I should have omitted.
J. G. W.





NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS

THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.

This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the
Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They
gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of
silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods,"
it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they
cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than
these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be
protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible
or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem,
under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by
Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by
Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on
French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form
to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American
clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student,
about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland,
but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it.
Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author,
wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the
information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the
moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the
Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written
in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy.

"O LADY fair, these silks of mine
are beautiful and rare,--
The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's
queen might wear;
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose
radiant light they vie;
I have brought them with me a weary way,--will my
gentle lady buy?"

The lady smiled on the worn old man through the
dark and clustering curls
Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his
silks and glittering pearls;
And she placed their price in the old man's hand
and lightly turned away,
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,--
"My gentle lady, stay!

"O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer
lustre flings,
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on
the lofty brow of kings;
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue
shall not decay,
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a
blessing on thy way!"

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her
form of grace was seen,
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks
waved their clasping pearls between;
"Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou
traveller gray and old,
And name the price of thy precious gem, and my
page shall count thy gold."

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a
small and meagre book,
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his
folding robe he took!
"Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove
as such to thee
Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not, for the word of
God is free!"

The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he
left behind
Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high-
born maiden's mind,
And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the
lowliness of truth,
And given her human heart to God in its beautiful
hour of youth

And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil
faith had power,
The courtly knights of her father's train, and the
maidens of her bower;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly
feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the
perfect love of God!
1830.




THE FEMALE MARTYR.

Mary G-----, aged eighteen, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our
Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, while
in voluntary attendance upon the sick.


"BRING out your dead!" The midnight street
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,
Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,
Her coffin and her pall.
"What--only one!" the brutal hack-man said,
As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
The dying turned him to the wall,
To hear it and to die!
Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;
"Toss in your load!" and it was done.
With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave's embrace
They cast them, one by one,
Stranger and friend, the evil and the just,
Together trodden in the churchyard dust.

And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;
No white-robed sisters round thee trod,
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer
Rose through the damp and noisome air,
Giving thee to thy God;
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,
In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee
As if beneath the convent-tree
Thy sisterhood were kneeling,
At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping
Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

For thou wast one in whom the light
Of Heaven's own love was kindled well;
Enduring with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,
Far more than words may tell
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

Where manly hearts were failing, where
The throngful street grew foul with death,
O high-souled martyr! thou wast there,
Inhaling, from the loathsome air,
Poison with every breath.
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread
For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.

And, where the sickly taper shed
Its light through vapors, damp, confined,
Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,
A new Electra by the bed
Of suffering human-kind!
Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,
To that pure hope which fadeth not away.

Innocent teacher of the high
And holy mysteries of Heaven!
How turned to thee each glazing eye,
In mute and awful sympathy,
As thy low prayers were given;
And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,
An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!

A blessed task! and worthy one
Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Before life's pathway had begun
To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow;
Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless truth.

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here
Could be for thee a meet reward;
Thine is a treasure far more dear
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard
The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,
The holy presence of Eternal Love!

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not
A nobler name than thine shall be.
The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
The lofty energies of thought,
The fire of poesy,
These have but frail and fading honors; thine
Shall Time unto Eternity consign.

Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,
And human pride and grandeur fall,
The herald's line of long renown,
The mitre and the kingly crown,--
Perishing glories all!
The pure devotion of thy generous heart
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part.
1833.




EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND."
(Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.)

How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning!
Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,
Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell
And fire-dance round the magic rock,
Forgotten like the Druid's spell
At moonrise by his holy oak!
No more along the shadowy glen
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;
No more the unquiet churchyard dead
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
Startling the traveller, late and lone;
As, on some night of starless weather,
They silently commune together,
Each sitting on his own head-stone
The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
Its living tenants all departed,
No longer rings with midnight revel
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!
The witch-grass round the hazel spring
May sharply to the night-air sing,
But there no more shall withered hags
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;
No more their mimic tones be heard,
The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,
Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
Of the fell demon following after!
The cautious goodman nails no more
A horseshoe on his outer door,
Lest some unseemly hag should fit
To his own mouth her bridle-bit;
The goodwife's churn no more refuses
Its wonted culinary uses
Until, with heated needle burned,
The witch has to her place returned!
Our witches are no longer old
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
But young and gay and laughing creatures,
With the heart's sunshine on their features;
Their sorcery--the light which dances
Where the raised lid unveils its glances;
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,
The music of Love's twilight hours,
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan
Above her nightly closing flowers,
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore
Along the charmed Ausonian shore!
Even she, our own weird heroine,
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,'
Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
And the wide realm of sorcery,
Left by its latest mistress free,
Hath found no gray and skilled invader.
So--perished Albion's "glammarye,"
With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
His charmed torch beside his knee,
That even the dead himself might see
The magic scroll within his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death, of sight or sound,
Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his terror or surprise,
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his "catechise,"
Or "Webster's Spelling-Book."
1833.




THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.

THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
And beats the maid with her unused broom,
And the lazy lout with his idle flail;
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat
By the stout monk's side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
Who seven times crossed the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast
The evil weight from his back at last.

But the demon that cometh day by day
To my quiet room and fireside nook,
Where the casement light falls dim and gray
On faded painting and ancient book,
Is a sorrier one than any whose names
Are chronicled well by good King James.

No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
No runner of errands like Ariel,
He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;
And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
I know as I do of the wind which blows.

A stout old man with a greasy hat
Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose,
And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
Looking through glasses with iron bows.
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,
Guard well your doors from that old man!

He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?"
And seats himself in my elbow-chair;
And my morning paper and pamphlet new
Fall forthwith under his special care,
And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat,
And, button by button, unfolds his coat.

And then he reads from paper and book,
In a low and husky asthmatic tone,
With the stolid sameness of posture and look
Of one who reads to himself alone;
And hour after hour on my senses come
That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.

The price of stocks, the auction sales,
The poet's song and the lover's glee,
The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,
The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit,
All reach my ear in the self-same tone,--
I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!

Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems
To float through the slumbering singer's dreams,

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
Of her in whose features I sometimes look,
As I sit at eve by her side alone,
And we read by turns, from the self-same book,
Some tale perhaps of the olden time,
Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.

Then when the story is one of woe,--
Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar,
Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low
Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;
And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,
And his face looks on me worn and pale.

And when she reads some merrier song,
Her voice is glad as an April bird's,
And when the tale is of war and wrong,
A trumpet's summons is in her words,
And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,
And see the tossing of plume and spear!

Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,
The stout fiend darkens my parlor door;
And reads me perchance the self-same lay
Which melted in music, the night before,
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,
And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet!

I cross my floor with a nervous tread,
I whistle and laugh and sing and shout,
I flourish my cane above his head,
And stir up the fire to roast him out;
I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,
And press my hands on my ears, in vain!

I've studied Glanville and James the wise,
And wizard black-letter tomes which treat
Of demons of every name and size
Which a Christian man is presumed to meet,
But never a hint and never a line
Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.

I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate,
And laid the Primer above them all,
I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate,
And hung a wig to my parlor wall
Once worn by a learned Judge, they say,
At Salem court in the witchcraft day!

"Conjuro te, sceleratissime,
Abire ad tuum locum!"--still
Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,--
The exorcism has lost its skill;
And I hear again in my haunted room
The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum!

Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen
With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew,
To the terrors which haunted Orestes when
The furies his midnight curtains drew,
But charm him off, ye who charm him can,
That reading demon, that fat old man!
1835.




THE FOUNTAIN.

On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of
clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about
two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac.

TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all else is still,
To the brooklet from the hill.

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
By that streamlet's side,
And a greener verdure showing
Where its waters glide,
Down the hill-slope murmuring on,
Over root and mossy stone.

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
O'er the sloping hill,
Beautiful and freshly springeth
That soft-flowing rill,
Through its dark roots wreathed and bare,
Gushing up to sun and air.

Brighter waters sparkled never
In that magic well,
Of whose gift of life forever
Ancient legends tell,
In the lonely desert wasted,
And by mortal lip untasted.

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