“A man’s a man for a’that.”
And from Burns’ most beautiful song Whittier sings,
“With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his cotter’s hearth
Has made my own more holy.”
These dreams and perceptions made him the poet of New England idyls, as did his spiritual inspiration of her ideals. He looked with anointed eyes upon her woods and fields, her hills and streams and her rocky coast. It was first through Burns and then through his own life that he sang:
“Yet on life’s current, he who drifts
Is one with him who rows or sails;
And he who wanders widest lifts