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Updated: June 19, 2025
May not the career of any great man be compared to the course of a river? and especially the lives of our American poets would seem to resemble in their purity and transparency the rivers of New England. Whittier's house, however, does not stand by the river's brim, but near the centre of the village, almost a mile away.
Whittier's chief excellence is to be found in his ballads; in the "Wreck at Rivermouth," "Skipper Ireson," "The Relief of Lucknow," "Barbara Frietchie" and others. Nothing is more rare than a fine ballad. Coleridge's ballad of the "Ancient Mariner" is probably the greatest English poem written since Milton's time, and there are many old English ballads which are nearly equal to it.
As I sat on my balcony hour after hour, reading and thinking of the Shelleys, watching the changing hues of the clouds and the beautiful bay, and listening to the sad monotone of the waves, these sweet lines of Whittier's came to my mind: "Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea!
He opened his heart still further then, and said how he longed for his old, wild life in the Desert, for a sight of the palms and the sands, but, above all, for its freedom." This interview made a deep impression, naturally, upon Whittier's mind, he, who was no traveler himself, having thus sung:
I shall never forget those happy days in June; the long walks and drives, and talks under the old trees of anti-slavery experiences, and Whittier's mirth and indignation as we described different scenes in the World's Anti-slavery Convention in London. He laughed immoderately at the Tom Campbell episode.
After that he was invited to all the meetings, and had on hand a stock of selections for delivery, his favorite being Whittier's Slave Mother's Lament over the Loss of Her Daughters: "Gone, gone sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings; Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews; Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air.
There was also another element, in chains, at the South, which at this time must have been trembling with that mysterious hope of coming Emancipation for their Race, conveyed so well in Whittier's lines, commencing: "We pray de Lord; he gib us signs, dat some day we be Free" a hope which had long animated them, as of something almost too good for them to live to enjoy, but which, as the War progressed, appeared to grow nearer and nearer, until now they seemed to see the promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, its beautiful hills and vales smiling under the quickening beams of Freedom's glorious sun.
Now and then there may be an eddy where the feeling lingers and reflects a bit of scenery, but for the most part it can only catch gleams of color that mingle with the prevailing tone and enrich without usurping on it. This volume contains some of the best of Mr. Whittier's productions in this kind. "Skipper Ireson's Ride" we hold to be by long odds the best of modern ballads.
For sheer improvising cleverness of rhyme Byron is still unmatched, but he often contents himself with approximate rhymes that are nearly as bad as some of Mrs. Browning's and Whittier's. Very different is the deliberate artifice of the following lines, where the monotony of the rhyme-sound fits the "solemn ennui" of the trailing peacocks;
Poor fellow! he had taken too much wine that day, and when Whittier's verses, addressed to the convention, were read, he criticised them severely, and wound up by saying that the soul of a poet was not in him. Mr. Stanton sprang to his feet and recited some of Whittier's stirring stanzas on freedom, which electrified the audience, and, turning to Campbell, he said: "What do you say to that?"
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