"Our old homestead nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low, green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled and laughed down its rocky falls by our garden-side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its time, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took it up and bore it down to the great sea."
Whittier's poems are full of references to the life on the farm; many of his best verses had their inspiration in memories of the past. For instance, the description of the building of the fire in "Snow-Bound," a poem which describes the life at the farm when he was twelve years old, is a faithful picture of what took place in the old kitchen every night of the long New England winter, when
"We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney back—
The oaken log, green, huge and thick,
And on its top the thick back-stick;
The knotty fore-stick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art.
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,