JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER was born at Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807, and is (1882) living at Amesbury, Mass., where he has been living for forty-two years.

His early life was passed in farm work and shoemaking. At eighteen, with a strong desire for learning, he entered a local academy and studied two years. In 1829 he edited the the Boston American Manufacturer, and in 1830 the Hartford New England Review. Having returned to his farm in 1835, he was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature, and in 1836 apnointed Secretary of the American Anti-slavery Society, and editor of The Pennsylvania Freeman.

Whittier's principal writings may be recorded as follows: In 1836, Voices of Freedom, and Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal; 1850, Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, also Collected Poems; 1851, Songs of Labor; 1853, The Chapel of the Hermits; 1854, Literary Recreations; 1856, The Panorama; 1859, Home Ballads; 1864, War Times; 1866, Snow Bound; 1867, Tent on the Beach; 1869, Among the Hills. Other works and many single poems deserve special mention, but space forbids.

Whittier was identified with the anti-slavery movement, and his Voices of Freedom show a conscientious earnestness and a terrible energy which seems to contain the very life and blood of the author.

He is sometimes called the Quaker poet, because he is a member of the society of Friends, or Quakers. He stands next to Longfellow in popularity. A very large circle of admirers even place him above all other poets of the present age.

The following appropriate lines were written by Longfellow :

TO JOHN G. WHITTIER.

O Thou, whose daily life anticipates

The life to come, and in whose thought and word

The spiritual world preponderates,

Hermit of Amesbury! thou, too, hast heard
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,

And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!

Snow-Bound.

HE sun, that brief December day,
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon,
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rythm our inland air.

Unwarmed by any sunset light,

The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag wavering to and fro

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow:
And ere the early bedtime came,
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun:

In tiny spherule, traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,

In starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;

And, when the second morning shone,

We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament;
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes: strange domes and towers Rose up where sty and corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed;

A fenceless drift what once was road:

The bridle-post an old man sat,

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor seemed to tell

Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

All day the gusty north-wind bore

The loosening drift its breath before;

Low circling down its southern zone,

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.