Nor laughing girl, or bearding boy,
Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering
here,

Shall add, to life's abounding joy,
The charmed repose to suffering dear.

Still waits kind Nature to impart

Her choicest gifts to such as gain
An entrance to her loving heart
Through the sharp discipline of pain.

Forever from the Hand that takes

One blessing from us others fall;
And, soon or late, our Father makes
His perfect recompense to all!

Oh, watched by Silence and the Night,
And folded in the strong embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face,

Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while above
Thy solemn mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of God's love.

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100

1853.

1 When I was fourteen years old my first schoolmaster, Joshua Coffin, the able, eccentric historian of Newbury, brought with him to our house a volume of Burns's poems, from which he read, greatly to my delight. I begged him to leave the book with me, and set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scottish dialect at its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a close student); and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures. (WHITTIER, in his Autobiographical Letter; Carpenter's Whittier, pp. 298-299.)

One day we had a call from a 'pawky auld carle' of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us 'Bonny Doon,' 'Highland Mary' and 'Auld Lang Syne.' He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter ; but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. (WHITTIER, Yankee Gypsies,' in his Prose Works, vol. i, pp. 336-337; also quoted in Carpenter's Whittier, p. 30.)

I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better

Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;

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60

Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even,

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon.

To love a tribute dearer?

Through all his tuneful art, how strong

The human feeling gushes!

The very moonlight of his song

Is warm with smiles and blushes!

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110

And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

1 The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck. (WHITTIER.)