St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-09-12
Ineisive Analysis Of Whit
tiers Work and Worth
to the World.
Complete in Manhood, in His
Poetry True, One Of Ma
lures Theologians.
The Dead Singers Points or
Strength From Different
StandpointS.

for God took him." He began by quot
ing the unique words of Bret Harte ap-
piled TO the death of Thomas Starr
King, in which the Waterman is rep
resented as saying that no star has
fallen, but that the Almighty has re-
lieved picket guard from duty. And
the speaker said that another picket,
who always stood in the loneliest and
most dangerous places when the fight
in the name of liberty and humanity
was raging, had been relieved by the
Father He further claimed that it was
not only the privilege, but the duty of a
truly liberal pulpit to point out lessons
OF noble lives, and to teach by practical
and actual experience.
He said this was one of the cases in
which you did not have to separate the
artist from his production nor to apollo
giZe for the man by saying that his
greatness was his own, while his vices
were the vices Of his age. He stood be-
fore the world '.in native worth and
honor clad" as we sing, and we are
proud to point to his noble manhood to
give emphasis to every line of his moral
teaching. His life was very simple.
de lived obedient to the inStinc cts that
are the
Endowment of the Race.
The most lowly as well as the most
lofty may find perfect ease in under
standing that life. And, consequently,
il only in this age of hustle and hurry,
we can get people to pause long enough
to consider his life and teachings, we
may be sure that he will have many ad-
mirerS.
AS poet he was inspired by Burns,
a copy of whose works fell into his
hands at an early age. Nor was this
strange. Burns had baptized every loch
and glen and mountain stream: he had
made poetry of the flight Of the bird,
and invested the thorn and the daisy
with habit and a character all their
own. And Whittier seems first to have
caught the idea of coming close to the
common people in this way. At first he
was possibly an imitator. but he soon
learned that any man. to have power,
must have Observation-Disclosures be char
acteriStic; and when ne learned this
lesson his power began to develop. He
then wore his own armor, and it is sin
gu!ar that he. as we'll as many others,
felt that he had made loss which God
counted a gain. For while he had
not the polish of finished education,
while he lacked the results which fin
lShed education would have given him,
by the very fact OF sympathy from
practical side with rural life, and from
knowledge Of a life that was altogether
peculiar and certainly worth preServ-
Ing, he became the poet of that best de-
velOpment of New England country life.
that has played its part IN the building
up OF every newer state in the Union.
He was strengthened by that Nestor of
great movement, Lloyd Garrison That
singular man was Outsung by Whittier,
outspoken by eloquent Phillips and sur
passed in many ways in gifts and graces
by others; but his rugged mind it was
that gave wings to the arrows of Phil
lips, tipped with fame, and going
straight to the mark; and he it was who
encouraged the youthful Whittier to
give
The Bugle-NOte Quality
to the work he had in hand. If anything
was needed to further develop that man,
it came in that belief of the poet that
there was within "a yoice''-"a silent
WItness'-that was with him as mon-
itOr, that came as the voice of God.
His poetry will be divided into two or
three classes by his admirers. They
will not claim for it the first place. They
will read it because of association, or
because it is personally helpful. 1t has
not in it the meditative sweep of Bryant
in his visions that embrace all forests,
all hills, all winds, and all oceans i'll his
reach. Longfellow has given US the
more polished and scholarly verse.
Even the poet of the Sierras-Mllier-
has given the shock of surprise more
often in his pictures of weird and pur-
ple-brown mountains with dun foot
hills. and life in the light of a yellow
ftaof mi, In
ing, bood-red, sunset seas.
Lowell made a living farmer of the
shrewd New England type; but he only
caught the farmer with camera. But
Whittier was son of the soil; and as
Mr.. Stedman has well said, there is
something inherent in his writing that
gives it flavor that cannot be found in
the more polished and even better
equipped men of hiss class with whom
he kept step in the march of life. IL is
the same something we find in Burns.
that same nameless quality we find in
Lincoln that interiaced his life with the
love of the people. that same gift that
is in MilIet, who by Intuition interpretS
the moods of the common people.
Whittier's Strong Points.
His New England home scenes, said
the preacher, will live for all time to
come. Here one class of readers will
place him at mis- highest point. This is
the reader who has travelled along the
Kennebec and PenObScot and watched
the raftsman's steady pull at the oar,
listened to his song, framed the picture
with the greenest of hills and the clear
est of waters, and fingered to enjoy the
Scene-whO has seen the drOverS. dusty
and tan, coming down from the Rangely
lakes with the little drove of cattle at
the season when the sumac was grow
ing red. when the golden rod was firing
ing the lane, and when the maple on
every hill was Haunting her flags of red
and yellow fame-who has been on
the roads of Dover, over which the
! Quakers were driven, and who has
been in the barns of Ipswich. and has
seen exactly such people as ESek Har-
den and Mabel Marten, the daughter of
| the witch, kept in the shadow by this
| terrible bar sinister.
To another class the poems that he
wrote in war times will have paramount
| interest. These will be the people who
| are not familiar with the scenes of New
| England, but who are warmly in SYM
, pathy with his boundless patriotism i;
| for he was the minstrel of the cause,
| and for years his stirring note was ex-
| pected as constantly in the crises as
WOO thO opSSNh Va hillPS. VI tuC CuI-
torial of Garrison. These men will re-
fer to "Ichabod'' and 1.-The Slave Moth
| er" as the highest level of his attain
ment. Still another class Will come to
| his religious poems, and, as he had a
distinct faith, many will consider these
| as the acme of what he reached. And
| his relation TO the modern world and
! the liberal church is such that these call
| for more extended examination.
| Faith of His Life.
The speaker here analysed ID his own
words several poems. He claimed that
| Whittier's fundamental idea was an i'm
manent Coda God found Within the
human heart-God found in the larger
movements of reform-God found in the
kind words and deeds of humanity. He
did not argue about this Father. He
found Him in Massachusetts,, or wher-
ever he himself was: and his only con-
Germ was to try to discover the Will of
that God, and as q human instrument