half-mystic

Updated: June 22, 2025

Whittier's powers. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, and, we think, pleasantly, with the warlike clang of "From Perugia." The years deal kindly with good men, and we find a clearer and richer quality in these verses where the ferment is over and the rile has quietly settled.

James Russell Lowell - The Function of the Poet and Other Essays