t rounds no edges. We have sometimes thought that his
verses suffered from a New England taint in a too great tendency to
metaphysics and morals, which may be the bases on which poetry rests,
but should not be carried too high above-ground. Without this, however,
he would not have been the typical New England poet that he is. In the
present volume there is little of it. It is more purely objective than
any of its forerunners, and is full of the most charming rural pictures
and glimpses, in which every sight and sound, every flower, bird, and
tree, is neighborly and homely. He makes us see

"the old swallow-haunted barns,
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight streams,
And winds blow freshly in to shake
The red plumes of the roosted cocks
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,"--

"the cattle-yard
With the white horns tossing above the wall,"--

the spring-blossoms that drooped over the river,

"Lighting up the swarming shad:"--

and

"the bulged nets sweeping shoreward
With their silver-sided haul."

Every picture is full of color, and shows that true eye for Nature which
sees only what it ought, and that artistic memory which brings home
compositions and not catalogues. There is hardly a hill, rock, stream,
or sea-fronting headland in the neighborhood of his home that he has not
fondly remembered. Sometimes, we think, there is too much description,
the besetting sin of modern verse, which has substituted what should be
called wordy-painting for the old art of painting in a single word. The
essential character of Mr. Whittier's poetry is lyrical, and the rush of
the lyric, like that of a brook, allows few pictures. Now and then there
may be an eddy where the feeling lingers and reflects a bit of scenery,
but for the most part it can only catch gleams of color that mingle
with the prevailing tone and enrich without usurping on it. This volume
contains some of the best of Mr. Whittier's productions in this kind.
"Skipper Ireson's Ride" we hold to be by long odds the best of modern
ballads. There are others nearly as good in their way, and all, with a
single exception, embodying native legends. In "Telling the Bees," Mr.
Whittier has enshrined a country superstition in a poem of exquisite
grace and feeling. "The Garrison of Cape Ann" would have been a fine
poem, but it has too much of the author in it, and to put a moral at the
end of a ballad is like stickin