Many of Whittier's early discarded verses are of a rather gruesome sort, but more are inspired by contemplation of sublime themes, like this apostrophe to "Eternity," which was published in the "New England Review" in 1831:—
ETERNITY
Boundless eternity! the wingéd sands
That mark the silent lapse of flitting time
Are not for thee; thine awful empire stands
From age to age, unchangeable, sublime;
Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb,
In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest.
I may not fathom thee: 't would seem a crime
Thy being of its mystery to divest
Or boldly lift thine awful veil with hands unblest.
Thy ruins are the wrecks of systems; suns
Blaze a brief space of age, and are not;
Worlds crumble and decay, creation runs
To waste—then perishes and is forgot;
Yet thou, all changeless, heedest not the blot.
Heaven speaks once more in thunder; empty space
Trembles and wakes; new worlds in ether float,
Teeming with new creative life, and trace
Their mighty circles, which others shall displace.
Thine age is youth, thy youth is hoary age,
Ever beginning, never ending, thou
Bearest inscribed upon thy ample page,
Yesterday, forever, but as now
Thou art, thou hast been, shall be: though
I feel myself immortal, when on thee
I muse, I shrink to nothingness, and bow
Myself before thee, dread Eternity,
With God coeval, coexisting, still to be.
I go with thee till time shall be no more,
I stand with thee on Time's remotest age,
Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er;
Still, still with thee my onward course I urge;
And now no longer hear the surge
Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore
Of distant earth; no more the solemn dirge—
Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er—
Steals by: still thou art on forever more.
From that dim distance I turn to gaze
With fondly searching glance, upon the spot
Of brief existence, when I met the blaze
Of morning, bursting on my humble cot,
And gladness whispered of my happy lot;
And now 't is dwindled to a point—a speck—
And now 't is nothing, and my eye may not
Longer distinguish it amid the wreck
Of worlds in ruins, crushed at the Almighty's beck.
Time—what is time to thee? a passing thought
To twice ten thousand ages—a faint spark
To twice ten thousand suns; a fibre wrought
Into the web of infinite—a cork
Balanced against a world: we hardly mark
Its being—even its name hath ceased to be;
Thy wave hath swept it from us, thy dark
Mantle of years, in dim obscurity
Hath shrouded it around: Time—what is Time to thee!
In 1832 a living ichneumon was brought to Haverhill, and was on exhibition at Frinksborough, a section of Haverhill now known as "the borough," on the bank of the river above the railroad bridge. Three young ladies of Haverhill went to see it, escorted by Mr. Whittier. They found that the animal had succumbed to the New England climate, and had just been buried. One of the ladies, Harriet Minot, afterward Mrs. Pitman, a life-long friend of the poet, suggested that he should write an elegy, and these are the lines he produced:—
THE DEAD ICHNEUMON