Read Ebook: Whittier at close range by Sparhawk Frances C

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Ebook has 687 lines and 42790 words, and 14 pages

Then the sharp call of the locust stabbing "the noon-silence;" the driver asleep on his haycart; the sheep huddled against the shade of the stone-wall; and

"Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers--grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette-- Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends To the pervading symphony of peace."

The eyes of the visitor in the garden room fell upon the couch standing under the sunset view, and she recalled how many famous persons had sat upon it--Emerson, "his Puritanic face with more than Eastern wisdom lit;" and Bayard Taylor; for she knew of his long and intimate friendship with the poet and his sister, a friendship terminating only with death--if, indeed, Whittier's friendships have ever terminated; for he seemed to reflect the eternity of Heaven in a heart that never forgot to love. And Sumner had been there--Sumner who with every gift that men prize had turned aside from them all to fight the battle of the slave--"has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?" sang the poet. And many more than these. "What loved ones enter and depart," recorded Whittier.

The books at hand; the desk beside the long window looking out upon the veranda were evidences of Whittier's life work and preparation to meet scholar and statesman upon their own grounds.

Near the desk stood the hospitable-throated Franklin stove. What wit and wisdom glowed in the light of its winter fires! And what wonderful closet was that in the garden room. Here the poet kept his wood--and much else besides! For, from it would he come forth armed with his logs and with the wizard-like power to read the thoughts of his companion! And this skill he proved as he sat before the fire and talked in fun or in earnest, often alternating in mood, but always illuminating the subjects he talked upon.

And in the summer days what a background the blackness of the open stove made for the flower treasures which the poet brought from his walks! Then, suddenly, the visitor wondered why there were no flowers upon the hearth that August day?

But even with the thought, the poet came into the room with his arms filled with flowers.

As he showed them to her, she touched a spray of the goldenrod. "The signal of autumn--Dame Nature's first grey hair," she said.

"Thee's about right there," he answered. "And what does thee call that?" And his deft fingers singled out another flower.

"The pale aster in the brook," she quoted.

He laughed, and went out of the room to put the flowers into water, but not before she had commented upon the splendid cardinal flowers scattered among the asters, and the brilliant sumach leaves and spikes which made a background in the gorgeous mass of color.

Whittier's poems are rich in descriptions of flowers, and he sang of them as only one who loved them could do:

"For ages on our river borders, These tassels in their tawny bloom, And willowy studs of downy silver, Have prophesied of Spring to come,"

he says of the beloved pussy-willows which open the floral ball of the year among the wild flowers of New England. For the trailing arbutus, our exquisite mayflower, "tinted like a shell," he has many a word. And he knows the flowers, all of them, from the bloom of the "summer roses," to where in the August heat,

"Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod, And the red pennons of the cardinal flowers Hang motionless upon their upright staves;"

to the late autumn where,

"... on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!"

And again to the very latest blossom,

"Last of their floral sisterhood, The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, The tawny gold of Afric's mine!"

So, throughout the year bloom and brightness, fragrance and beauty find their records in the songs of the poet. "What airs outblown from ferny dells!" he exclaims in his "Last Walk in Autumn" where he treads as if a painter's brush were in his hand, bringing to the reader's eye "winter's dazzling morns" and "sunset lights" and "moonlit snows," to atone for the loss of summer bloom and greenness.

Whittier took great pride in the beauty and diversity of the flora of his own Essex County; he used to say that it was the richest and most varied of the region. He wrote more than one poem to celebrate autumn festivals in his own town.

In his walks with his sister in her later years, as he writes of her, "too frail and weak" to go herself in search of the flowers she longed for, he would make her rest upon a rock or grassy bank and alone would search for the treasures of wood and field of which both were so fond.

One day when returning from Boston to Amesbury he met a young friend of his on the train. As the two were talking together, a boy selling water lilies passed through the car. The poet bought a bunch of them and gave to his companion. As they sat looking at the exquisite flowers, he said to her: "Thee'd hardly think that the same Hand that made those made snakes."

That August day while the flowers glowed in the throat of the Franklin stove, converting blackness into splendor, the poet sat in his arm-chair telling his visitor somewhat of the book into which she had peeped while waiting for him; telling her also of other books, and of people and things.

In the talk and laughter that followed he spoke of Dickens, of whose writings the poet was very fond, declaring that he was never so restless, or so troubled over politics, or so blue about himself, or the weather, that he could not have a good laugh over "Pickwick."

As the poet sat that day beside his books, with the light from the window falling upon him, he looked, as he was, a man among ten thousand. Tall, erect, as he was even to the last, full of the nervous energy that found ready expression in glance and gesture, his head a remarkable height from ear to crown, domelike, built for brains and spiritual power; his eyes radiant at times with the fire of his soul and having the rare capacity both to absorb and to express everything; his heavy eyebrows delighting in swift accompaniments to the humorous twists of his mouth as he told a droll story, or in pain or in moods of despondency dropped down to conceal the eyes that all too plainly revealed how things were in the soul. His whole look was alert, as that of a man whom the last new thing can never surprise.

After a time the poet searched the table for a book he had left there. His visitor explained that a neighbor had come in and borrowed it. "She said you had so many books, you wouldn't miss it," added the speaker.

Down came Whittier's hand upon his knee in the fashion so well known to his intimates; for his hands might have been called almost another feature, such emphasis did they give to his expression.

"I was in the midst of reading it myself," he retorted. "I wish she had taken something else to amuse her; she won't care for it; I could have helped her out better in a book. But she is satisfied." And his infectious laugh was echoed by his hearer.

For Whittier never forgot how precious books had been to him in his childhood and early youth; and how he had hungered for them. And now that he had them in abundance, he so gladly shared them with his friends that these had the habit of coming in and, if he happened to be away, of helping themselves to whatever they wanted to borrow; so that the poet would often search about for a book that he himself wished to lend and, not finding it, would remark resignedly that he guessed somebody had come in and taken it.

How natural and true was his life--that simple life so much praised at present, and so little lived! How unfettered by ceremony and the impedimenta of pomp was the genius which awoke the country by its ringing songs of freedom, and at the same time with a skill and statesmanship which the best politicians acknowledged and were glad to profit by, helped to build up the great party which destroyed slavery, saved the Union, and in spite of its grievous later faults, may well be proud of its record and its continued accomplishments.

How simple was the home in which so much that was grand and permanent was accomplished! For in the garden room great plans were formulated--yes, and the spirit to execute them inspired--great poems were sung, and there were born great thoughts that have helped to move the world onward and Heavenward. How ready was the many-sided Whittier to welcome all phases of human nature but the evil, and in his abhorrence of evil still to pity the evildoers! His neighbors and friends never forgot that he was a great man, with power that had a long arm and fame that reached across the water--a longer distance then than today.

But how could they help confiding their homely cares and difficulties to one so sympathetic and so wise? And how could they help coming to his home as one honored enters a city the freedom of which has been bestowed upon him?

It was in the garden room that the home life of the poet centered; and here his friends from a distance and the neighbors who were also friends sought him. In his chair by the window, or in winter beside the open fire, he was wont to entertain his guests; and only those who were thus entertained know how rich was the feast of thought and soul spread for even the least worthy of them.

His humor so seldom caught in his writings by reason of the many and deeper powers in him, here glowed in his thoughts and flashed up in his words warming and cheering his atmosphere as the open fire of which he was so fond warmed and brightened the garden room. And, indeed, it seems as if there must have been a subtle sympathy between the two forces. For the poet was never keener or more racy than when, having thrown on fresh wood, he knelt on one knee, adjusted the sticks, watched the flames dart out and catch the new fuel, and then suddenly turned his head with that birdlike motion of his and made some remark to his visitor, often, as has been said, catching the latter's very thought.

As a poet should sing of his home, Whittier sang the beauties of the scenery in and around the town in which he lived, its walks and drives giving views of hilltop and lake, of stream and ocean.

Amesbury is set among the hills, Powow Hill at its back and the swift stream of the same name running from the foot of this hill through the town and going on to join the Merrimac. Amesbury is a border town--the only town of this name in the whole country, this and its neighbor Salisbury being called from the famous Amesbury and its adjacent Salisbury in England. Amesbury with the beautiful Merrimac River on its south, has on its north the rounded summits which make New Hampshire from its very beginning the land of hills. It was one of the earliest settled towns in America, receiving its name in 1667, and electing its board of "Prudenshall" the following year. From earliest times, Whittier's own family figured largely in the annals of this region, Whittier Hill in Amesbury having been named from one of his ancestors. It was impossible that Whittier should not have deep interest in its history and legends, and in its people among whom he had intimate and dear friends.

With the poet's keen eye for beauty he saw

"the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold."

He pictures on the banks of the Powow old "Cobbler Keezar" beholding through his magic lapstone the river, then

"Woodsy and wild and lonesome,"

changed to the day when the mighty forest was "broken by many a steepled town."

A stone's throw from Whittier's grave still stands the house of "Goodman Macey," the hero of the poem, "The Exiles," which tells his story. The haunted house in the poem, "The New Wife and the Old," is still pointed out in Hampton, although recently it has been removed to another site, restored and inhabited by other than ghosts. "Margaret Smith's Journal," in his prose writings, takes the reader through the woods of Newbury giving many a picturesque incident of the life of the times--and many a touching one. "The Double-Headed Snake" is a legend of Newbury; "The Bridal of Pennacook" sketches the upper portions of the Merrimac; "The Swan Song of Parson Avery" sends its singer from the Newbury shores out beyond the bar and into the great ocean. In his songs the poet carries us along the Salisbury shore of the river to the Chain Bridge which crosses it at Deer Island, the home of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, his contemporary, herself novelist and poet; thence up the Newbury shore to that poem of streamlets, the Artichoke, which slipping beneath the overhanging boughs of trees that all but meet across it, goes through the old mill race--Curson's Mill--to join the Merrimac.

Beyond the woods and the two rivers lies the ocean. "The Tent on the Beach" describes the long stretch of Salisbury before its invasion, first by shanties and then by hotels and casinos and cottages, transformed its picturesque solitudes. But nothing can make less magnificent the long roll of the incoming surf along its six miles of almost unbroken reach of sands.

In one of his letters Whittier says:

"The country about here never looked so beautiful as now. We went to Salisbury pine woods yesterday after meeting. I never saw such perfect and glorious effects of light and shadow--such perfection of green earth and blue sky--such grottoes and labyrinths of verdure, barred at the entrance by solid beams of sunlight, like golden gates. At such times I wish I were a painter."

In this same letter the poet gives a touch of home life. "We had a pleasant visit from Lucy Larcom last week," he writes. "Brother Frank was here on sixth day on his way from Boston--will be back tomorrow or next day. We have had the famous Moncure Conway here. He came over last week with the Cursons."

"The Cursons" were two interesting sisters of fine New England ancestry. The sisters with their mother lived at Curson's Mills where the fairy Artichoke flows to meet the Merrimac. It was to these sisters Whittier's "Lines after a Summer's Day's Excursion" were written:

"Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke The morning dreams of Artichoke Along his wooded shore!

Varied as varying Nature's ways, Sprites of the river, woodland fays, Or mountain nymphs, ye seem."

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