And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth.
The second volume, “North of Boston,” is twice as long as “A Boy’s Will” and contains half as many titles. There would be nothing in this mathematical formula if it did not carry with it a real difference in content. But this second book is made up not of lyrics, but of unimpassioned vignettes of New England life. This is the grim New England which the poet attempted to shut out in “Love and a Question”:
But whether or not a man was asked,
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.
The book presents the death of a farm laborer, the maddened bereavement of a mother whose child is buried within sight of the house, the black prospect faced by a household drudge who faces the insanity which is an inherited blight in her blood. They are not amiable pictures, and they offer neither problem nor solution, only the life itself. They are not, however, all equally grim. “The Mountain” tells of a township of sixty voters with only a fringe of level land around the looming pile. It dominates life, limits it, and rises above it, for few have either time or curiosity to reach the top. “The Black Cottage” presents a widowed relict of the Civil War who knew only her sacrifice and whose unthinking orthodoxy was as hazy as her political creed. With liberalism in the parish, the preacher was inclined to omit “descended into Hades” from the ritual:
... We could drop them
Only—there was the bonnet in the pew,