"When on my day of life the night is falling,
And in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown,
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O Helper ever present,
Be Thou my strength and stay!"
At Last.
"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise."
The Brewing of Soma.
But Whittier is as remarkable for his faith in man as for his faith in God. He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He loves America because it is the land of freedom. It has been charged against him that he is no true American poet, but a Quaker poet. The American, it is said, is eager, aggressive, high-spirited, combative; the Quaker, subdued and phlegmatic. The American is loud and boastful and daring and reckless; the Quaker, cautious, timid, secretive, and frugal. This is undoubtedly true of the classes as types, but it is far from being true of Whittier personally. He has blood militant in him. He comes of Puritan as well as Quaker stock. The Greenleafs and the Batchelders were not Quakers. The reader will perhaps remember the Lieutenant Greenleaf, already mentioned, who fought through the entire Civil War in England.[25] But his writings alone furnish ample proof of his martial spirit. The man and the Quaker struggle within him for the mastery; and the man is, on the whole, triumphant. Whenever his Quakerism permits, he stands out a normal man and a genuine American. As Lowell says:—
"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
And reveals the live Man still supreme and erect
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect."
If anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete works of Whittier, he or she will find that one of the predominant characteristics of his writings is their indigenous quality, their national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too notorious to need mention. He, if any one, merits the proud title of "A Representative American Poet." His whole soul is on fire with love of country. As in the case of Whitman, his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered all the affectional wealth of his nature. The Quaker may be too obtrusive in his prose writings, but it is not so in the greater and better portion of his poetry. When the rush and glow of genuine poetical inspiration seize him, he invariably rises in spirit far above the weltering and eddying dust-clouds of faction and sect into the serene atmosphere of genuine patriotism. Read his "Last Walk in Autumn," where he says:—
"Home of my heart! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!"
Read his "Eve of Election":—