The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1892-10-14


formed romantic attachment for
his employers daughter whose
image haunted him all of his life
and to whose memory he consecrat-
ed his love of domesticity and re-
NAMED bachelor.
He has given us an exquisite pic
ture of this love episode of his boy
hood in "My Playmate" so full of
homely pathos as to thrill the lag
gard pulses and dim the sunken eyes
of age with sentimental memories
of life's prime:
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom"
#%* *%% %%N
~ walk with noiseless feet the round
OF uneventful years;
still DER and DER SOW the spring
And reap the autumn ears"
49, %*% ***
81 see her face l hear her voice;
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her fathers kine?"
This hopeless passion did not,
however, embitter his kindly nature,
nor did he allow it to burden his
songs with the exception of the one
quoted and a similar tender lyric en-
titled SIN School Days"
The true poet is never a maudlin
sentimentalist and Whittier, who
sang as the birds sing, spontaneous
ly from in herentlove of melody, had
worthier use for his Tyre than to
offer its strains on an alter of self
immolation to be lost in the sacri-
fetal flames Of unrequited love.
j. T. Trowbridge wrote an anus
ing commemorative poem on Whit
tiers SEVENTEEN birthday in which
he described the ludicrous eff
forts of two little Quaker lad, to lift
themselves bodily over fence in
defiance of the laws of gravity. One
of these ingenious youngsters after
wards sung his way to renown in the
National Era under the initials j. G..
W., and the other-weu the other
must have somehow got over the
1t is a rather sad commentary upon
Whittier's forcible anti-slavery songs,
his vigorous and eloquent protests
against Imprisonment for debt, and
his manly appeals in behalf of labor,
that his death has called forth less
favorable comment upon his life
work than did the demise of the
"good gray poet" Walt Whitman,
whose claim to future distinction
must rest upon the merits of LEAVES
of Grass" work familiar only to
students of literature and re-read
only by that class that delight in
perusing the Decameron. In nc
sense can Whitman be deemed the
peer of Whittier as poet. The
former attained an undeserved audi
ence through the kind praise of r
w. Emerson, who, if we except the
Rhodora, the lines on the death OF
his idolized son, "the deep eyed
boy" and few minor poems that
were written under stress of emo,
tions that stirred the profound SOU
of the philosopher to its depths, was
as unmusically mechanical in his
verse as Whitman.
Poets, male and female, have al
ways been creatures of clay" brin,
ming over with romance and a
boundless capacity for falling in love
legally or illicitly, and the lines oil
the masters will not bear too close {
scrutiny.
Meredith tells us that "a poet
loved a star" and won the luminary
only to exclaim: 81 miss from Heaven
a STAR" and the star sighed: 81 miss
from earth a poet"
Yet Whittier has escaped all
calumny. No slanderous tongue has
ever assailed the spotless purity OF
his life. His long intimacy with Lucy
Larcom, the Lowell factory girl, who
drew her inspiration from the hum o
looms and whose sweet madrigali
breathea hope(to quote her owl
words) for "a second life, more spirit
ual than the frst-a life won only
out of DEATH" caused no idle GOSSIP
but was recognized as sincere anC
helpful friendship between an honest
earnest man and one of America
noblest types of womanhood,
1t is well that, in this age of licen
tiousness and "poetic license" whel
even the author of the Light o
Asia" sullies his title of noblemal
by indulging in low amours with thu
dancing girls of Japan, grea
poet whose austere life has beer
passed in a fercer light than eve
beat upon throne, should leave be
hind him an honorable record o
rugged manly virtue.
Yet no man among the many wh'
have set their thoughts to rhyme
had a greater charity for human
frailties than he. | quote from hi
poem on Burns:
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones OF beauty;
But think while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he WIN Invad like Mazda len