Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/24

xvi repute in which Whittier was now held. At the same time his publishers, Messrs Ticknor & Fields, were in negotiation with him for anew volume, and in 1850 appeared "Songs of Labor, and Other Poems."

These two volumes which gathered the fruit of twenty years show unmistakably the further growth of Whittier's poetic power. With the establishment of his anti-slavery convictions into firm working principles, the maturing of his experience the enlargement of his political vision, and the increase in his friendship, there had come also a strengthening of his hand in the use of his pen, and a finer use, because more clear and restrained, of his poetic voice. Moreover, the religious feeling which was seen in his earlier life, and put to the test by closer association with men, had deepened into a serene confidence in God which pervaded his life and sustained him against all the shock of a disappointing age. Moreover, his eye and ear were in harmony with nature, and more and more he found not only an escape to nature as a relief from the world but a positive enjoyment in the field of beauty. Poetry, once a literary exercise, then a channel for the relief of a mind overburdened with its sense of an unconquered evil, was now become the full, free expression of a nature broadening under the thought of God, delighting in response to the world of beauty, strong and secure m a great purpose of humanity. It was his natural voice, which formerly broke under the strain of a changing constitution, but now was pure, sweet and far-carrying, obeying a trained impulse and resonant with a full force.

The establishment of "The Atlantic Monthly" in 1857 gave another impetus to Whit- tier's poetic productiveness. Here was a singular illustration of the growth in the community about him of a spirit quite in agreement with his own personality. Opposition to slavery lay at the base of the origin of the magazine, and yet in the minds of its projectors, this political bond was to unite men of letters and not simply antagonists of slavery. Ihe "Atlantic" was to be the organ of the literary class, but it was to be by no means exclusively devoted to an anti-slavery crusade. Indeed it would almost seem as if this specific purpose of the magazine was almost lost sight of at first m the richness and abundance oi general literature which it immediately stimulated. It is easy now to see how natural and congenial a medium this was for Whittier's verse. In subjecting his political and literary Imbition to a great moral purpose, so that he could no longer hope for political official power, and, in his own words

in doing this, though it cost him a struggle, be had fulfilled the true saying that to save one's life one must lose it. He had given up the name and place of a political magnate, but he had secured the more impregnable position of the power behind the throne in politics, and in place of a smooth versifier, holding the attention of those with whom poetry was a plaything, he had become one of the few imperative voices of song, and had taken his place as oife of the necessary men in the group of men of letters who now came to- gether to represent the highest force in American literature.

For it is to be observed that Whittier was now no longer regarded as only the singer of spirited songs flying with all their winged power straight at the enemy as they sped Lorn a bow held by an Apollo. The passion which he had shown in his polemical verse had awakened his whole nature, and his poems on whatever theme came from a nature which had been developed in all its powers by this commanding purpose, nevertheless it is noticeable how the new opportunity afforded by the "Atlantic" and the increased association with the other great writers of the day, was consonant with if not the cause of broadening of Whittier's mind, a sunny burst of full life, finding expression in such poems as "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "The Sycamores," "The Pipes at Lucknow," "Mabel