No more of beauty’s jealous veils
Than he who from his doorway sees
The miracle of flowers and trees,
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air
And from cloud minaret hears the sunset call to prayer!”
He sings the beauty in brooks and fields, the oneness that pervades all nature, and how to the opened eyes,
“From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,
And Rome’s cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.”
This world of beauty in everyday life Whittier has revealed to those who do not travel; he has opened their eyes to perceive how great are their possessions, not in the far-away, nor in the future, but here and now. Other poets may arouse longings for the unattainable; but Whittier has shown us how the manna of life lies at our own doors waiting for us to gather. Burns with inspired lyre sings of the daisy and the mouse, of the Doon and the Ayr, of men and of his “Highland Mary.” Whittier sings of flower and tree and field, of mountain and river, of men and women. But over all his pictures arches the depth of the sky giving them perspective and illumination. When he sings of the sea,
“The ocean looketh up to God