The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-02-28
LITERATURE.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.


THE TENT ON THE BEACH, AND OTHER POEMS
By John Greenieaf Whittier. Boston: Ticknor
EFields. Philadelphia: g. w. Pitcher, No. 8OS
Chestnut street.
Mr.. Whittier is in some respects the repre-
sentative American poet. In him is found a
happy combination of prosaic fact and poetic
fancy, for which we look in vain in any other
writer. Songsters seem to divide themselves
either into the sensuous, of whom Swinburne
is an extreme example, or into the intensely
refined, of whom Shelley and Wadsworth are
instances. In the productions of Mr.. Whit
tier we find proof that he belongs to both, and
yet to neither of these classes. He selects as
the foundation of his rhyme some simple
event, and so touches it with the pen of fancy
that his narrative poems, of which "Maud
Nuller'' is by far the best known and finest,
are beyond comparison the finest of the kind
in our language. His great forte consists in
dealing not with such fancies as Coleridge or
Moore could evoke, nor yet in such lyrics as
can be produced by Longfellow, nor yet in
semi-metaphysical strain, as "The Two
Voices'' of Tennyson, but he must deal with
things we have all seen and experienced, or he
gets out of his latitude. As long, however,
as he remains amid farmhouse, the orchard
or the beach, he is supremely monarch of his
province of poetry. His charming little epic,
'Snow Bound, has hardly reached its desti-
nation ON the tables ofthe people, and the public
have not yet ceased to discuss its merits, when
another work from the prolific pen of Mr..
Whittier is handed us. "The Tent on the
Beach, falls entirely within the province
which belongs by right of conquest to him.
1t is the tale of three friends evidently taken
from nature, who pitched their tent, during
the summer months, on the beach, and spent
the dog days.
'Where briet sojourners, in the cool, soft air,
Forget their inland heats, hard TOLL and year
long care"
The three friends whose reveries and con-
VersatiOns are introduced to us are each dis
tinctly described and although we cannot
guess their identity, it would take no great
stretch of fancy to make the second answer for
the author
"One with his beard scarce slvered bore
ready credence in his looks;
A lettered magnate, lording DER
An ever widening realm of books.
In him brain currents near and far,
Converged as in a Leyden JAR"
The second of the two is thus painted:-
"And one there was n dreamer born,
Who, with q mission to fulfil,
Had left the Muses. haunts to turn
The crank of an opinion-mill.
Making his rustic reed of song
A weapon in the war of wrong.
A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
He seemed no fiery partisan"
The last of the little band is told to us as:-
''And one whose Arab face was tanned
By tropic sun and boreal frost,
So travelled there was scarce land
Or people left him to exhaust,
In idlinE mood had from him hurled
The poor squeezed orange OF the world"
Many of the descriptions of ocean scenery,
little adventures, and trifing incidents, with
which the work abounds, are portrayed with
all that vivid force and genial pleasantly which
have always made Mr.. Whittier so peculiarly
acceptable. The description of how their time
was spent has a peculiar fascination to us
cramped-up deni2ens of the crowded city
"And there, on breezy morns. they saw
The tishing-schooners outward run,
Their iow-bent sails in tack and flaw
turned white or dark to shade or sun,
Sometimes in calms of closing day,
They watched the spectral mirage play,
Saw low far islands looming tall and nigh,
And ships, with upturned keels, sail IKE a sea
the sky.
"Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,
STOPPED low upon the darkening main,
Piercing the waves along its track
With the slant javeins Of rain.
Chased out TO sea its wrecks of storm,
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers
Where the green buds Of lUdUeS burst into iUbte
Jroth JtoUerS.
sand when along the line of shore
The mists crept upward chill and damp,
Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor
Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
They talked of all things old and new,
Read, slept and dreamed as idlers do;
And in the unquestoned freedom of the tent
Body and oer-taXed mind to healthful ease
unbent,"
The two italicized lines deserve note. The
peculiar yet strictly correct structure Of the
sentence, ''sail like a sea the sky" is pecu-
liarity of the author, all of his works abound
ing in such quaint yet well-constructed lines.
The metaphor of the "green buds'' and 'white
flowers" is so happy as to strike any reader.
One evening, as they sit around the lamp in
the tent, it is proposed that they read original
articles, and the great body of the book is COM
posed of the pieces thus read, They are united
together not unlike the tales of 'Lalla Roolah."
The first is the "Wreck of Rivermouth. The
whole tale is told in two verses:--
".Fie on the witch = cried a merry girl,
AS they rounded the point where Goody Cole
Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
'OhoP she muttered, 'ye're brave to-day!
But hear the little waves laugh and say,
''The broth will be cold that waits at home;
For its one TO go, but another to comev'
'Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
The low sun smote through cloudy rack;