Kansas University Weekly.
5
LITERARY.
Winter Poetry of Longfellow and Whittier.
Winter Poetry of Longfellow and Whittier. In the year 1807 were born two Ameriean poets, each of whom has won a large place in the hearts of American readers—the one for his deep human sympathy, the other for his love of nature and freedom. They were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Longfellow was reared in a home of culture and carefully trained in school and college. Whittier knew nothing but the rustic, almost unlettered life, and rough farm work of his quaker home, until he was nineteen years old. At that age Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College.
Longfellow's boyhood memories were of the beautiful town of Portland, with its busy wharf and bay, and of the wooded hills that reach back and far away to inland plains. He remembered the bustling life of the sea-port as well as the solitude of the forest, where, perhaps, on some hilltop, he climbed a barren oak and gained the grand prospect of the Atlantic lying blue and calm, or worried and tossed by storms.
Whittier's recollections of boyhood days are much narrower as to horizon and more meagre as to events. The Whittier homestead is described as being in a little pocket of a valley, so shut in that not even the nearest farm-house is visible.
But there were the woods and neighboring lakes and the wild scenery, and Whittier grew up among them, living as near "nature's heart" as the Bard of the Avon, and he loved his native lakes as much as did Wordsworth or Coleridge. No short poem tells more completely the story of the boyhood of the poet, his study, work, and pastimes than "Snow Bound." This is a beautiful winter idyl suggested by Emerson's "Snow Storm." From the poem itself, we learn that it was written in later life, when the snows of time had whitened his locks and years had hallowed and sweetened the memory
days long since gone by. By the time we have read eight stanzas we have the scene well before us as to detail, though not as to latitude and longitude. We do not know that it is in Massachusetts, but we do know that it is within sound of the ocean, and that it is shut in by hills—wooded hills, covered with oak and hemlock.
The first seven stanzas are devoted to the description of the gathering snowstorm, and of the scene after the storm. The perspective is limited, but sufficient for a perfect picture. The foreground is represented in detail, but the details are not wearisome. When the picture is finished, we know the place from the barn with its old horse, its cattle, its sheep and its chickens, to the brush-pile and the bridle-post, grotesquely togged in cap and frock of snow. Even the brook is not forgotten, though its voice is choked and hushed in smothering snow.
The interior of the farmhouse is given as much in detail and before the readers is half through the poem, he has made the acquaintance of the family, of their nearest friends and of all the household pets. He easily imagines himself one of the fireside group, watching the simmering cider and the sputtering apples as he listens to the stories told. It is a picture of a simple life of rude comfort and content.
Speak the name of Whittier and most of us will recall dimly or vividly, something of "Snow-Bound." But who would remember Longfellow as the poet who wrote "Woods in Winter"or "Afternoon in February." These are short poems, lacking the elements of interest found in "Snow Bound." Each stanza is but a glance from under our cap as we hurry along against the sharp wind. In the third line of the first stanza, Longfellow says:
"With solemn feet I tread the hills." But in the two preceeding lines he says:
"The winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the Hawthorne blows the gale, "
When we remember that though a young man at this time, he was not fond of the frolics