John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-1892 Snowbound is a poem of home it is the glowing testimony of son and brother to the love and happiness which abounded in the warmth of his childhood's fireside. By the magic of his pen no less wonderful than the supernal powers of the lamp he yearned to possess in his childhood, he has brought the family to our hearts as though we too had shared their joys and their sorrows. His Barefoot Boy is a felicitous little poem whose happy lines carry its readers back to boyhood and the farm. His Songs of Labor dignify the occupations they celebrate, and his antislavery lyrics had no little effect in accomplishing the abolition of slavery. Other poems are beautiful in expression and filled with the high sentiment that makes the Quaker Poet a favorite with all who love mankind. His was an uneventful life, made even more quiet and retiring by the poor health which shut him out from many of the activities in which he wished to engage. He never married, and was painfully shy and reticent in company though with the improved health of later years came more of self-confidence and he allowed himself to be brought more before the public. His man ners were engaging and he always appeared to advantage, even while conforming strictly to the beliefs of his sect in the constant cut of his coat. He was not a highly educated man, he traveled but little, was never in Europe, and spoke no language but his own. In consequence of this his poetry is not filled with the scholarly allusions for which Lowell is noted, nor is it so refined and polished as that of Bryant or Longfellow. He demonstrates that lineage and highly cultivated ancestry are not essential to all men in the world of letters. The defects of his early education rarely show, and errors in his verse are so infrequent that they attract little attention. The perfect simplicity of all he wrote is its greatest charm, as though he knew it was not his place to soar, but that his niche was near to the people, in the simple American home. A permanent and active politician, unswerving in his devotion to his principles, he made his share of enemies in the exciting days of the slavery struggle but he performed his duties as a writer and as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature with such evident conscientiousness that his most active opponent respected and admired his character. His greatest fame rests upon his leadership in the agitation for the emancipation of the slaves. He was, moreover, the exponent of deep religious feeling and the ardent advocate of love and purity in the home. Robert Burns He was born near Ayr, Scotland, in 1759. In the thirty-seven years of his brief life he contributed as much to the wealth of English literature as any other writer has given. His education was pitifully limited by his father's straitened circumstances and whatever he acquired of fluency and skill in the use of English he picked up for himself from the books he could borrow or obtain in How his poems came neither you They grew. They came to him as he stood by the gently flowing Ayr; they found him as he held the handles of his plough or sat at the little deal table in his humble home. any other way. nor I can tell. If ever His a poet was inspired, Burns had that favor. verse is as universal as art could make it, his sentiment as true as the church could wish it, and his humanity as broad as the schooled reformer could advocate. His first volume of poems appeared when he was twenty-seven years old and was published to obtain money for his passage to the West Indies where he had agreed to go as an assistant overseer. The book made him famous and brought him friends through whose aid he was enabled to give up his projected and unwelcome journey. Edinburgh received him with open arms and he was the welcome guest at all homes of wealth and refinement. Success was his and wealth might have come to him but his erratic genius gave him no peace and he persisted in wild courses that brought him poverty, suffering and disgrace. He tried farming and made a home for his wife and family, but discontent and neglect brought him to failure and want. After some years of wandering shame, wherein he learned no prudence, but caroused and joined in wild dissipations whenever he was able, he died in abject misery. His is one of the world's pathetic stories and we are left still to wonder whence came those beautiful poems whose hold upon the hearts of the people, time can never loosen. Besides the ones printed in this course, Tam O'Shanter, The Twa Dogs, and many of his shorter lyrics are worthy of admiration, but unfortunately there are also many that are tainted by the low associations and evil company that discolored so much of Burns's unhappy life. "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord-its various tone, Each spring-its various bias; Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." |