To the Col. F—— (afterward General) then at the front the poet wrote:
“We watch with ever wakeful interest the progress of the war. Sometimes we feel discouraged; but the good God sees and knows all and His time is best.... My sister [Elizabeth], Miss B—— [who, later Col. F—— married], and Dr. S—— and family desire to be kindly remembered to thee.”
The mention of Bayard Taylor in these letters recalls Whittier’s poem, “Bayard Taylor,” in which the poet refers to this visit:
“‘And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?’
My sister asked our guest one winter’s day.
Smiling, he answered in the Friends’ sweet way
Common to both: ‘Wherever thou shalt send.’
“‘What wouldst thou have me see for thee?’ She laughed,
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire’s glow;
‘Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low
Unsetting sun on Finmark’s fishing craft.’”
With abounding faith in the ultimate triumph of right, the poet yet had all the dread of disaster incident to so sensitive an organization. At the defeat at Bull Run he was prostrated.
It is in the major and the minor of his sufferings and his trust that his songs, “In War Time,” were sung. “Luther’s Hymn,” the sombreness of “The Watchers,” the depth of prayer in “Thy Will Be Done”—all show the struggle and sorrow of his spirit. But hope speaks in “The Battle Autumn of 1862,” where he sings:
“Oh, give to us in times like these,
The vision of her eyes;
And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies!
“Oh, give to us her finer ear!
Above this stormy din,
We, too, would hear the bells of cheer
Ring peace and freedom in.”
His “Port Royal” is a burst of joy and triumph, with the song of the freedmen in the minor key, so far are they yet from the reality of the freedom which they have in name. In “Barbara Frietchie” we have not only an inspiring ballad which has flown the wide world over; but we have also a touch of the nobler nature of the South epitomized in the order of Stonewall Jackson; and the poem, in trend if not in speech, is a prophecy of returning loyalty, a prophecy of the day when—not by force, but through love of them—the stars and stripes were to float over North and South alike.
One day during the Civil War, when the poet was at her house, the doctor’s wife said to him:
“Mr. Whittier, what did you mean when you wrote that poem, ‘What of the Day’? You wrote it in 1857, four years before the war. It’s a perfect prophecy of the present time. You remember, it begins:
‘A sound of tumult troubles all the air.’
What did you mean by it?” she repeated.
“I don’t know myself what I meant by it,” he answered her as earnestly as she had spoken; and his look finished what more he would have added—that the poem was, indeed, an inspiration, a real prophecy.
Thus, to the poet who sang a “higher wisdom,” who lived a holier life than words alone of any creed can enjoin, to him in the world’s imperative need of holiness to endure and of inspiration to conquer in the stress and strain of the life of today we turn for glimpses of his inspiration.