The ancient teachers, never dumb,
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.1
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,2
By many an occult3 hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature's heart so near
That all her voices in his ear,
Of beast or bird, had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds.
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne's1 loving view,-
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle's eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies 2 of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;3
The muskrat plied the mason's trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.
As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
1 White of Selborne: that is, Gilbert White (1720-1793), the author of a famous book entitled Natural History of Selborne, England -in which are many minute and charming descriptions of the birds
and beasts of the district in which he lived.
2 prodigies, wonderful exploits. 3 hermit gray. cell. Show the felicity of this simile.
4 held, deemed, considered.
Against the household bosom lean,1
Upon the motley-braided mat 2
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed within the fadeless green
And holy peace of Paradise.3
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago:—
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow,
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,5
Yet following me where'er I went,
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
1 and let ... lean. Explain. 2 motley-braided mat. Explain. 3 Now bathed . Paradise. What fact is thus beautifully implied? See Webster for the derivation of "Paradise."
4 reach, a straight portion of a stream, as from one bend to another.
5 too frail... to seek: that is, "too frail and weak to seek for the hillside flowers which she loved."
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth1 I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life's late afternoon,2
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon.
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I can not feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,3
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy be koning hand?
2. THE GENIUS OF THE WEST.
[Whittier wrote this fine poem on the occasion of “receiving an eagle's quill from Lake Superior." Its general purpose is to celebrate the breadth, freedom, and opportunity afforded by the Great West.]
ALL day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,4
1 the wealth: that is, the wealth of his sister's remembered affection.
2 life's late afternoon. What idea underlies this metaphor?
3 when the sunset gates unbar. Explain this beautifully tender expression.
4 All day... lain. Change this couplet to the prose order.
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane;
But now my torpid1 fancy wakes,
And, on thy2 eagle's plume,
Rides forth like Sindbad on his bird,
Or witch upon her broom!
Below me roar3 the rocking pines,
Before me spreads the lake
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves.
Against the sunset break.
I hear the wild rice-eater4 thresh
The grain he has not sown ;5
I see, with flashing scythe of fire,
The prairie harvest mown.
I hear the far-off voyager's horn;
I see the Yankee's trail, -
His foot on every mountain-pass,
On every stream his sail."
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see his peddler show;
1 torpid (Latin torpidus, stiff), benumbed.
4 rice-eater, the rice-bird, so named from its depredations in
2 thy, in reference to the sender rice-fields; the reed-bird. In New
England it is called the bobolink.
5 thresh the grain, etc. Ex-
plain.
6 scythe of fire, etc. A prairie
8 Below me roar, etc. This and similar expressions in the succeeding stanzas (as "I hear," "I see," etc.), are examples of the figure of | fire. speech called vision.
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