We cannot but wonder who the favored "Playmate" of the poet was, and we
sympathize with him when he asks,--

"I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,--
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.

"I see her face, I hear her voice:
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?"

And we feel an intense interest in knowing whether or not she cares,
when he tells her,--

"The winds so sweet with birch and fern,
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.

"And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,--
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!"

Mr. Whittier has never married, and his favorite sister long presided
over his home in Amesbury, where his mother and the dear aunt also came
after the father's death. It was the bitterest loss of his life when
this beautiful sister died, and he has written nothing more touching
than his tribute to her in "Snowbound":--

"With me one little year ago,
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er she went
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.

* * * * *

And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"

This sister Elizabeth was herself a remarkable woman, and one of whom
the world would have heard more but for her great modesty. She was
gifted with a fine poetic taste, and was not only appreciative, but
might have been creative as well. A