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XXVI.

AMERICAN POETS.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER-FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

I DID a great injustice the other day when I said that the Americans had at last a great poet. I should have remembered that poets, like sorrows,

"Come not single spies

But in battalions."

There is commonly a flight of those singing-birds, as we had ourselves at the beginning of the present century; and besides Professor Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Lowell and Poe do the highest honor to America.

The person, however, whom I should have most injured myself in forgetting, for my injustice could not damage a reputation such as his, was John G. Whittier, the most intensely national of American bards.

Himself a member of the Society of Friends, the two most remarkable of his productions are on subjects in which that active although peaceful sect take a lively interest: the anti-slavery cause, in the present day; and the persecution of the Quakers, which casts such deep disgrace on the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers and their immediate successors in the early history of New England.

Strange it seems to us in this milder age, that these men, themselves flying from the intolerance of the Old Country, should, the moment they attained to any thing like power, nay, even while disputing with the native Indians, not the possession of the soil, but the mere privilege of dwelling peaceably therein, at once stiffen themselves into a bigotry and a persecution not excelled by the horrors of the Star Chamber! should, as soon as they attained the requisite physical force, chase and scourge, and

burn and sell their fellow-creatures into slavery, for that very exercise of private judgment on religious subjects, that very determination to interpret freely the Book of Life, which had driven themselves into exile! Oh! many are the causes of thankfulness which we owe to the Providence that cast us upon a more enlightened age; out for nothing ought we more devoutly to render thanks to God than that in our days the deeds recited in Mr. Whittier's splendid ballad of "Cassandra Southcote" would be impossible.

His poem itself can scarcely be overrated. The march of the verse has something that reminds us of the rhythm of Mr. Macaulay's fine classical ballads, something which is resemblance, not imitation; while in the tone of mind of the author, his earnestness, his eloquence, his pathos, there is much that resembles the constant force and occasional beauty of Ebenezer Elliot. While equally earnest, however, and equally eloquent, there is in Mr. Whittier, not only a more sustained, but a higher tone than that of the Corn-law Rhymer. It would indeed be difficult to tell the story of a terrible oppression and a merciful deliverance, a deliverance springing from the justice, the sympathy, the piety of our countrymen, the English captains, with more striking effect. I trauscribe the prose introduction, which is really necessary to render such an outrage credible, although one feels intuitively that the story must have been true, precisely because it was too strangely wicked for fiction.

"This ballad has its foundation upon a somewhat remarkable event in the history of Puritan intolerance. Two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Southwick, of Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of all his property for having entertained two Quakers at his house, were fined ten pounds each for non-attendance at church, which they were unable to pay. The case being represented to the General Court at Boston, that body issued an order which may still be seen on the court records, bearing the signature of Edward Rawson, Secretary, by which the Treasurer of the County was fully empowered to sell the said persons to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes to answer said fines.' An attempt was made to carry this barbarous order into execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the West Indies. Vide Sewall's History,' pp. 225-6, G. Bishop."

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To the God of all true mercies let my blessing rise to-day,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away,-

Yea, He, who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars,
Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars,
In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time,
My grated window whitened with autumn's early rime.

Alone in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by;
Star after star looked palely in, and sank adown the sky;
No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea.

All night I sate unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow,
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!

Oh the weakness of the flesh was there, the shrinking and the shame, And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came : "Why sitst thou thus forlornly ?" the wicked murmur said, "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed?

"Where be the smiling faces and voices soft and sweet
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street?
Where be the youths, whose glances the summer Sabbath through
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?

"Why sitst thou here, Cassandra? Bethink thee with what mirth
Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth;
How the crimson shadows tremble, on foreheads white and fair,
On eyes of merry girlhood half hid in golden hair.

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken;

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham Woods by laughing boys are broken;

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,

For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful rustics braid.

"O weak, deluded maiden! by crazy fancies led,
With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread;

To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound,
And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound.

"Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things divine,
Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine,
Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame,
Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame.

"And what a fate awaits thee! a sadly toiling slave,

Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave!
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall,

The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!"

Oh-ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble nature's fears
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears,
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer,
To feel-O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed wert there!

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,
And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell,
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white,
And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.

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Slow broke the gray cold morning, again the sunshine fell
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell;
The hoar-frost matted on the wall, and upward from the street
Came careless laugh, and idle word, and tread of passing feet.

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff's side up the long street I passed;
I heard the inurmur round ine, and felt, but dared not see,
How from every door and window the people gazed on me.

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We paused at length where at my feet the sunlit waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock;
The merchants' ships lay idiy there in hard clear lines on high
Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky.

And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains, with faces bronzed and old,

And on his horse with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand,

Sate dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.

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But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made,

Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring

No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff turning said:
"Which of ye worthy seamen will take this Quaker maid?
In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore,
You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor."

P

Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried

"Speak out, my worthy seamen!" no voice or sign replied:

But I felt a hard hand press my own and kind words met my ear;— "God bless thee and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!"

A weight seemed lifted off my heart-a pitying friend was nigh,
I felt it in his hard rough hand I saw it in his eye;

And when again the sheriff spake that voice so kind to me
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea

"Pile my ship with bars of silver-pack with coins of Spanish gold
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold,
By the living God who made me! I would sooner in yon bay
Sink ship and crew and cargo than bear this child away!"

"Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!"
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud, the people's just applause.
"Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,

Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?"

I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-way drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn;
Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track.

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul,

Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roli; "Good friends," he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest, Judge ye if from their further work I be not well released."

Loud was the cheer, which. full and clear, swept round the silent bay,
As with kind words and kinder looks he bade me go my way;
For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen
And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men.

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye,
A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky,
A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay.

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath set His handmaid free!
All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid,
Who takes the crafty in the maze which for the poor is laid!

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I add the opening stanzas of an equally powerful and eloquent poem, with the few lines of explanation prefixed by the author.

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