On his leafy cradle swung?”
The only reason for hesitating between the wolfs howl and the hooting of the owl was the poet’s want of a rhyme. But it is needless to load our page with these nonsense-verses, since Hudibras claims them to be a poet’s privilege:
“But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other’s sake;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think that’s sufficient at one time.”
Whittier’s Quaker faith inspired him early in life with an abhorrence of slavery, and drew him to the abolitionists, by whom, in 1836, he was appointed secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. It was about this time that he began to publish his anti-slavery rhymes, which he afterwards collected in a volume entitled, Voices of Freedom. These verses are not remarkable for thought or expression. They have the dull, monotonous ring of all Whittier’s rhymes, and are hardly more poetic than a political harangue. They are partisan
in tone and manner; breathe rather hatred of the “haughty Southron” than love of the negro; and are without polish or elegance. Read to political meetings during the excitement of the anti-slavery agitation, they were probably as effective as ordinary stump-speeches. Worthless as they are as poetry, they brought Whittier to public notice. He became the laureate of the abolitionist party, and with its growth grew his fame. The circumstances which made Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most popular novel of the day made him a popular poet. His verses found readers who cared but little for inspired thought or expression, but who were delighted with political rhymes that painted the Southern slave-owner as the most heartless and brutal of men, who “in the vile South Sodom” feasted day by day upon the sight of human suffering inflicted by his own hand. Pieces like that which begins with the words,
“A Christian! Going, gone!
Who bids for God’s own image?”