JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

PROEM

TO EDITION OF 1847

I LOVE the old melodious lays

Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's° silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours

To breathe their marvellous notes I try;

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,

And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time,

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Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 15

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies;

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature's face,

I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seer-like power to show

The secrets of the heart and mind;

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For the Vision still was standing
As he left it there before,
When the convent bell appalling,
From its belfry calling, calling,
Summoned him to feed the poor.
Through the long hour intervening
It had waited his return,
And he felt his bosom burn,
Comprehending all the meaning,
When the Blessed Vision said,

"Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!"

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JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

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PROEM

TO EDITION OF 1847

I LOVE the old melodious lays

Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours

To breathe their marvellous notes I try;

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,

And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme

Beat often Labor's hurried time,

Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies;

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature's face,

I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seer-like power to show

To drop the plummet-line° below
Our common world of joy and woe,

A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.

Yet here at least an earnest sense

Of human right and weal is shown;

A hate of tyranny intense,

And hearty in its vehemence,

As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.°

O Freedom! if to me belong

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,°

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,

Still with a love as deep and strong

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine! 35

THE FROST SPIRIT°

HE comes, he comes,

the Frost Spirit comes! You

may trace his footsteps now

On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's withered brow.

He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth,

And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth.

He comes, he comes, the frozen Labrador,

the Frost Spirit comes! - from

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From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white

bear wanders o'er,

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below

In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues

And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past.

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With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow

On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below.

He comes, he comes,

the quiet lake shall feel

The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel;

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass,

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Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence

meet him as we may,

- let us

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light

dances high,

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding