CHAPTER V.
POEMS BY GROUPS.
Besides "The King's Missive," Whittier has written numerous other Quaker poems, the finest of which are "Cassandra Southwick," "The Old South," and the spirited, ringing ballad of "The Exiles." In the first two of these the poet shows a delicate intuition into the feelings that might have prompted the Quaker women who witnessed for the truth in Boston two hundred years ago.
There is nothing in American literature, unless it be the anti-slavery papers of Thoreau, which equals the sevenfold-heated moral indignation of Whittier's poems on slavery,—a wild melody in them like that of Highland pibrochs; now plaintively and piteously pleading, and now burning with passion, irony, satire, scorn; here glowing with tropical imagery, as in "Toussaint L'Ouverture," and "The Slaves of Martinique," and there rising into lofty moral atmospheres of faith when all seemed dark and hopeless. Every one knows the power of a "cry" (a song like "John Brown's Body," or a pithy sentence or phrase) in any great popular movement. There can be no doubt that Whittier's poems did as much as Garrison's editorials to key up the minds of people to the point required for action against slavery. Some of these anti-slavery pieces still possess great intrinsic beauty and excellence, as, for example, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," "The Farewell," "The Slave Ships," and "The Slaves of Martinique." In these four productions there is little or none of the dreary didacticism of most of the anti-slavery poems, but a simple statement of pathetic, beautiful fact, which is left to make its own impression. Another powerful group of these slavery poems is constituted by the scornful, mock-congratulatory productions, such as "The Hunters of Men," "Clerical Oppressors," "The Yankee Girl," "A Sabbath Scene," "Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower One," and "The Pastoral Letter."[30] The sentences in these stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot. The poltroon clergy, especially, looks pitiful, most pitiful, in the light of Whittier's noble scorn and contempt.
"Randolph of Roanoke" is a noble tribute to a political enemy by one who admired in him the man. The long poem, "The Panorama," must be considered a failure, poetically speaking. Its showman's pictures and preachings do not get hold of our sympathies very strongly.
The Tyrtaean fire in Whittier was so thoroughly kindled by the anti-slavery conflict that it has never wholly gone out. All through his life his hand has instinctively sought the old war-lyre whenever a voice was to be raised in honor of Freedom. The formal close of the anti-slavery period with him may be said to be marked by "Laus Deo," a triumphant, almost ecstatic shout of joy uttered on hearing the bells ring when the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery was passed.
Naturally, the war poems of a Quaker—and even of our martial Whittier—could not be equal to his peace poems. Still there are many strong passages in the lyrics written by Whittier during the civil war of 1861-65. At first he counsels that we allow disunion rather than kindle the lurid fires of fratricidal war:—
"Let us press
The golden cluster on our brave old flag
In closer union, and, if numbering less,
Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain."
A Word for the Hour.