Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier

[142] swayed him. Note that in the whole sixteen verses the great majority of the words are monosyllables; observe how the veeries sing themselves into the line ; and how the moaning of the sea of change rushes out and prolongs itself until the revery is passed, and the same sea sweeps in and ends the dream as absolutely as that one whirling cloud of disastrous air, from the St. Pierre volcano, ended every breath of mortal life for thirty-six thousand human beings. See, again, how in the fourth verse, out of twenty-six words, every one is made monosyllabic in order that the one word “bashful” may linger and be effective; and see how in the sixth the one long word in the whole poem “uneventful” multiplies indefinitely those bereft and solitary years. Did Whittier plan those effects deliberately? Probably not, but they are there; and the most exquisite combination of sounds in Tennyson or in Mrs. Browning's “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” can only equal them. Even to Whittier, they came only in a favoured hour; and in the more continuous test of blank verse, he fails, like every modern poet since Keats, save Tennyson, alone.

“ Amy Wentworth” is also one of his very best, and has the same delicate precision of sound to the ear and in the use of proper names; the house in Jaffrey Street, with its staircase and its ivy; with Elliot's green bowers and the sweet-brier, blooming on Kittery sidethe very name “side” being local. This, however, was a wholly fictitious legend, as he himself told me; and still more imaginative was his last ballad, written at the age of sixty-eight, which I quote, in preference to “My Playmate,” as less known. It has the peculiar