"Yesterday the sullen year Saw the snowy whirlwind fly."--_Gray._
"All winter drives along the darkened air."--_Thomson._
"High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch; Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried."--_Grahame._
"Alas! alas! thou snow-smitten wood of Troy, and mountains of Ida."--_Sophocles._
"O hard, dull bitterness of cold."--_Whittier._
"And in the narrow house o' death Let winter round me rave."--_Burns._
"The mesmerizer, Snow, With his hand's first sweep Put the earth to sleep."--_Robert Browning._
"And the cakèd snow is shuffled From the plough-boy's heavy shoon."--_Keats._]
"Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, and was written, Mr. Whittier has said, "to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." The poet has obeyed the canon of Lessing, and instead of giving us dead description wholly, has shown us his characters in action, and extended his story over three days and the two intervening nights,--that is to say, the main action covers that time: the whole time mentioned in the poem is a week. It is unnecessary to give here any further account of the idyl than has already been furnished in the account of Whittier's boyhood.
"The Tent on the Beach" is a cluster of ballads. In accordance with a familiar fiction, they are supposed to be sung, or told, by several persons, in this case three, namely, the poet himself, "a lettered magnate" (James T. Fields), and a traveller (Bayard Taylor). All of the poems are readable, and many of them are to be classed among Whittier's best lyrics. "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The Changeling," and "Kallundborg Church" are masterpieces in the line of ballads. In "The Dead Ship of Harpswell" we have the fine phrase,--
Whittier has now become almost a perfect master of verbal melody. Hearken to this:--
"Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it's one to go, but another to come!'"
There is a light and piquant humor about some of the interludes of the "Tent on the Beach." The song in the last of these contains a striking and original stanza concerning the ocean:--
"Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea!"