The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-03
Whittier's New Poems.


farmers son,
Proud Of feld-lore and dharvest-cratt, and feeling
All their fine possibilities, how rich
And restful even poverty and toll
Become when beauty, harmony, and love
SIT at their humble hearth as angels sat
At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man
Makes labor noble, and his farmers frook
The symbol of Christian chivalry,
Tender and just, and generous to her
Who clothes with grace all duty; still, know
Too well the picture has another side:
How YEARLY the grind OF toll goes on,
Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear
And heart are starved amidst the pentitude
OF nature, ard how hard and colorless
Is life without an atmosphere. | look
Across the lapse of half century,
And call to mind old homesteads, where no
flower
Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,
Nightshade and Tough-leaved burdock in the
place
OF the sweet doorway greeting of the rose
And honeysuckle, where the house walls
seemed
Blstering in sun, without tree or vine
TO cast the tremulous shadow Of its leaves
Across the curtainless windows from whose
panes
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness;
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor unwashed
(Broom-clean, think they called it); the best
room
Sitting with cellar damp, shut from the air
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless
Save the inevitable sampler hung
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,
A greep-haired woman, peory checked, be-
meath
Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth
BIistlipg with faded pine-boughs half conceal
ing
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;
And, in sad keeping with all things about
them,
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen
men,
Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
| With scarce human interest save their own
Monotonous round of small economies,
Or tfe poor scandal Of the neighborhood;
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,
Treading the May flowers with regardless feet;
| For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink
Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;
| For them in vain October's holocaust
| Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,
| The sacramental mystery of the woods.
| Church -goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
And winter pork with the least possible outlay
| OF salt and sapctity; in daily life
| Showing as little actual comprehension
OF Christian character and love and duty,
| AS if the sermon on the mount had been
Outdated like a last years almanac:
! Rich in broad woodlands and in halftlIled heds,
And yet SO pinched and bare and comfortless.
The veriest straggler limpng in his rounds,
The sun and air his sole inheritance,
| Laughed at poverty that paid its taxes,
And bugged its rags in self-complacency
Not such should be the homsteads of land
| Where whose wisely Wills and acts may dwell
As king and lawgiver, i'll broad-acred state, - -.
With beauty, art taste culture, books, to
make
His hour of leisure richer than life
Of fourscore to the barons of old time,
Our yeoman should be equal to his home
Set in the fair green valleys, purple walled,
A man TO match his mountains, not to creep
DwaIfed and abased below them. l would
fain
In this light way (of which must needs cwn,
With the knife grinder of whom Canning sings,
"Story, God bless you! have none to tell
yOupO
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel
| The beauty and the joy within their reach
Home, and home loves, and the beautitudes
OF nature free to ALL HAPPY in years
That wait to take the places Of our own,
Heard where some breezy balcony looks down
On happy homes, or where the lake in the
| moon
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,
II the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
OF BOsz, even this simple lay of mine
May seem the burden of a prophecy,
Finding its late fulflment in change
Slow as the oaks growth, lifting manhood up
Through broader culture, finer manners, love,
And reverence, to the level of the hills.
The germ of this poem originally appeared
in the January (lS6S) number of the Atlantic
Monthly where it was entitled "The Idyl OF
Bsaucheap Water" 1t has been enlarged,
however, to twice its original size. 1t now
contains such lines as thsse:--
The early crickets sang; the stream
Flashed through my friends narration:
Her rustic patois of the hills
Lost in my free translation.
Through Sandwich notch the west wing sang
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
OF shadow pierced the water.
Above his broad lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
STOPPED, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armOrial bearing.
Clear drawn against the hard blue sky
The peaks had winters keenness:
And, close on autumn's frost, the wales
Had more than Junes fresh greenness.
Again the sodden forest floors
With golden lights were cheokered,
Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
And sunshine danced and hckered.
II was as If the summers late