Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;

1 This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the Seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the Compromise,' and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest.

...

But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in 'The Lost Occasion,' I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of Liberty and Union, one and inseparable.' (WHITTIER.)

'Ichabod' and 'The Lost Occasion' (p. 348) should necessarily be read together. The best possible comment on the two poems, from the point of view of to-day, is that of Professor Carpenter: Those whom Whittier knew best in later life relate that he came eventually to feel that Webster was perhaps right and he wrong; that compromise meant weary years of waiting, but that the further and consistent pursuit of such a policy might have successfully avoided the evils of war and of reconstruction. However that may be, the verses [of 'Ichabod '] are, in their awful scorn, the most powerful that he ever wrote. Right or wrong, he spoke for a great part of the North and West, nay, for the world. For the poem, in much the same fashion as Browning's Lost Leader,' is becoming disassociated with any special name, and may thus remain a most remarkable expression - the most terrible in our literature of the aversion which any mass of people may feel, especially in a democracy, for the once-worshipped leader whose acts and words, in matters of the greatest public weal, seem to retrograde.' (Carpenter's Whittier, pp. 221-222.)

Compare Emerson's 'Webster,' p. 61, and the note on it; and Holmes's 'The Statesman's Secret,' and 'The Birthday of Daniel Webster.' See also Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i, pp. 327-328.

For the meaning of the title, see 1 Samuel iv, 19-22: And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel.' It may have been suggested by an anonymous article of Lowell's on Daniel Webster, in the Anti-Slavery Standard (June, 1846), in which he says: Shall not the Recording Angel write Ichabod after the name of this man in the great book of Doom?' (Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 201.)

On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light,

O'er the cold winter-beds of their latewaking roots

The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;

And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps,

Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,

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Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,

With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!

We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!

For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;

For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,

Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!

Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased

The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,

Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow,

All the way from the land of the wild Es

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,

The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

ΤΟ

20

With mine your solemn spirit blends,
And life no more hath separate ends.

I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,
And I am yours, and ye are mine.

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
I lapse into the glad release
Of Nature's own exceeding peace.

O welcome calm of heart and mind!
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind
To leave a tenderer growth behind,

So fall the weary years away;
A child again, my head I lay
Upon the lap of this sweet day.

1 See the note on 'The Lakeside, p. 281.

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This western wind hath Lethean powers, Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers, The lake is white with lotus-flowers!

Even Duty's voice is faint and low,
And slumberous Conscience, waking slow,
Forgets her blotted scroll to show.

The Shadow which pursues us all, Whose ever-nearing steps appall, Whose voice we hear behind us call,

That Shadow blends with mountain gray,
It speaks but what the light waves say,-
Death walks apart from Fear to-day!

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I
Alike on Nature's love rely;
And equal seems to live or die.
Assured that He whose presence fills
With light the spaces of these hills
No evil to His creatures wills,

The simple faith remains, that He
Will do, whatever that may be,
The best alike for man and tree,
What mosses over one shall grow,
What light and life the other know,
Unanxious, leaving Him to show.

II. EVENING

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