"Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day!
But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
For it's one to go, but another to come!'"
There is a light and piquant humor about some of the interludes of the "Tent on the Beach." The song in the last of these contains a striking and original stanza concerning the ocean:—
"Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!"
"Among the Hills" is a little farm-idyl, or love-idyl, of the New Hampshire mountain land, and bearing some resemblance to Tennyson's "Gardener's Daughter." It is an excellent specimen of the poems of Whittier that reach the popular heart, and engage its sympathies. In the remotest farm-houses of the land you are almost sure to find among their few books a copy of Whittier's Poems, well-thumbed and soiled with use. The opening description of the prelude to "Among the Hills" could not be surpassed by Bion or Theocritus. In this poem a fresh interest is excited in the reader by the fact that the city woman falls in love with a manly farmer, thus happily reversing the old, old story of the city man wooing and winning the rustic beauty. The farmer accuses the fair city maid of coquetry. She replies:
"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
And see you not, my farmer,
How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor?
'I love you: on that love alone,
And not my worth, presuming,
Will you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming?'
Alone the hangbird overhead,
His hair-swung cradle straining,
Looked down to see love's miracle,—
The giving that is gaining."
In "Lines on a Fly-Leaf," the author of "Snow-Bound" gives in his hearty adherence to that movement for the elevation of woman, and the securing of her rights as a human being, which is perhaps the most significant and important of the many agitations of this agitated age.
The poem "Miriam," like "The Preacher," is one of those long sermons, or meditations in verse, which Whittier loves to spin out of his mind in solitude. It contains in "Shah Akbar" a fine Oriental ballad.