Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see! she stirs ! She starts, she moves, 350 The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms! And lo! from the assembled crowd There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, How beautiful she is! How fair Of tenderness and watchful care! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, 355 360 365 370 375 Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee! 380 385 390 395 393. The reference is to the treacherous display, by wreckers, of lights upon a dangerous coast, to attract vessels in a storm, that they may be wrecked and become the spoil of the thieves. 398. The closing lines gather into strong verses, like a choral, the cumulative meaning of the poem, which builds upon the material structure of the ship, the fancy of the bridal of sea and ship, the domestic life of man and the national life. [Mr. Noah Brooks, in his paper on Lincoln's Imagination (Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879), mentions that he found the President one day attracted by these closing stanzas, which were 66 quoted in a political speech: "Knowing the whole poem," he adds, as one of my early exercises in recitation, I began, at his request, with the description of the launch of the ship, and repeated it to the end. As he listened to the last lines [395-398], his eyes filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some minutes, but finally said, with simplicity : • It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir men like that.'"] JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, of Quaker birth in Puritan surroundings, was born at the homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, working upon the farm and in the little shoemaker's shop which nearly every farm then had as a resource in the otherwise idle hours of winter. The manual, homely labor upon which he was employed was in part the foundation of that deep interest which the poet never has ceased to take in the toil and plain fortunes of the people. Throughout his poetry runs this golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and enforced poverty, and many poems are directly inspired by it. While at work with his father he sent poems to the Haverhill Gazette, and that he was not in subjection to his work is very evident by the fact that he translated it and similar occupations into Songs of Labor. He had two years' academic training, and in 1829 became editor in Boston of the American Manufacturer, a paper published in the interest of the tariff. In 1831 he published his Legends of New England, prose sketches in a department of literature which has always had strong claims upon his interest. No American writer, unless Irving be excepted, has done so much to throw a graceful veil of poetry and legend over the country of his daily life. Essex County, in Massachusetts, and the beaches lying between Newburyport and Portsmouth blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting. He has made rare use of the homely stories which he had heard in his childhood, and learned afterward from familiar intercourse with country people, and he has himself used invention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the New England coast. Although of a body of men who in earlier days had been persecuted by the Puritans of New England, his generous mind has not failed to detect all the good that was in the stern creed and life of the persecutors, and to bring it forward into the light of his poetry. In 1836 he published Mogg Megone, a poem which stood first in the collected edition of his poems issued in 1857, and was admitted there with some reluctance by the author, who placed it in an appendix when he made his final Riverside edition in 1888. In that and the Bridal of Pennacook he draws his material from the relation held between the Indians and the settlers. His sympathy was always with the persecuted and oppressed, and while historically he found. an object of pity and self-reproach in the Indian, his profoundest compassion and most stirring indignation were called out by African slavery. From the earliest he was upon the side of the abolition party. Year after year poems fell from his pen in which with all the eloquence of his nature he sought to enlist his countrymen upon the side of emancipation and freedom. It is not too much to say that in the slow development of public sentiment Whittier's steady song was one of the most powerful advocates that the slave had, all the more powerful that it was free from malignity or unjust accusation. Whittier's poems have been issued in a number of small volumes, and collected into single larger volumes. Besides those already indicated, there are a number which owe their origin to his tender regard for domestic life and the simple experience of the men and women about him. Of these Snow-Bound is the most memorable. Then his fondness for a story has led him to use the ballad form in many cases, and Mabel Martin is one of a number, in which the narrative is blended with a fine and strong charity. The catholic |