In the garden room, worthy synonym of a poet’s study where blossom flowers of thought and beauty, a young neighbor of the poet awaited his coming.
His easy chair stood with bookshelves on the right hand, whence he could gather from them as he pleased—although books were scattered everywhere over the house—and at its left was the table between the windows looking into the garden, while opposite it stood the door from the little hall, so that the chair faced all who entered the room. She looked across the room at a painting of a California sunset—Starr King’s gift to the poet. Near the painting was the engraving of an Arctic scene sent to the poet and his sister Elizabeth by Dr. Kane on his return from his Arctic explorations. She remembered how for a long time the picture had failed to appear, and how when a duplicate had been sent and hung, this first picture had at last arrived, and had been given by Miss Whittier to one of her Amesbury friends.
The poet had banished from the garden room a fine oil painting of himself in his youth, a striking portrait, full of individuality, yet bearing a suggestion of Burns. But it was not strange that one poet should recall the other, since there was in some respects a marked resemblance in the moods and ideals of the two; while in character and life they were as far asunder as the poles.
When Whittier’s poem on “Burns,” written “On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom,” was published, his sister Elizabeth wrote to the doctor’s wife, “This song of Burns was written partly before, but thy gift of heather bells has given it all its beauty. Nobody knows how much I love the old romance of Scotland, and the name of heather or moorland always has a charm.” Later, the poet himself told the giver—a Scotswoman—of his early falling in with the poems of Burns, and how the Scottish poet had opened his eyes to the beauty of the simplicities of life and our rich possession in these, and how, taught by Burns, Whittier had
“Matched with Scotland’s heathery hills
The sweetbrier and the clover.”
All his life Whittier saw and taught
“The unsung beauty hid life’s common things below.”
What compensation to him for the limitations which his life work for the slave and his own delicate health imposed upon him! In proclaiming the slave his brother, Whittier came to perceive his own brotherhood with all men bound in whatever slavery of mind and soul, to see that simplicity and reality were the great forces of life and inspiration in poetry as in all other things. His own early instructions prepared him for Burns’ assertion,