100. See Matthew 25: 40.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)
"Best loved and saintliest of our singing train,
Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong.
A lifelong record closed without a stain,
A blameless memory shrived in deathless song."
—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
Born at East Haverhill, Mass., in surroundings which he faithfully describes in "Snow-Bound," he had little education. At the age of twenty-two he secured an editorial position in Boston and continued to write all his life. For some years he devoted all his literary ability to the cause of abolition, and not until the success of "Snow-Bound" in 1866 was he free from poverty.
The poems by Whittier are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works.
PROEM
Proem: preface or introduction.
3. Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599). His best-known work is the "Faerie Queen."
4. Arcadian Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586); an English courtier, soldier, and author. He stands as a model of chivalry. He was mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen. "Arcadia" was his greatest work; hence the epithet here.
23. plummet-line: a weight suspended by a line used to test the verticality of walls, etc. Here used as if in a sounding process.