Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 1 | Page 2

marvellous notes I try;?I feel them, as the leaves and flowers?In silence feel the dewy showers,?And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.
The rigor of a frozen clime,?The harshness of an untaught ear,?The jarring words of one whose rhyme?Beat often Labor's hurried time,?Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.
Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,?No rounded art the lack supplies;?Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,?Or softer shades of Nature's face,?I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.
Nor mine the seer-like power to show?The secrets of the heart and mind;?To drop the plummet-line below?Our common world of joy and woe,?A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.
Yet here at least an earnest sense?Of human right and weal is shown;?A hate of tyranny intense,?And hearty in its vehemence,?As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.
O Freedom! if to me belong?Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,?Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,?Still with a love as deep and strong?As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.
AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847.
INTRODUCTION
The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note by way of preface:--
"In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand.
"That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they were suggested.
"The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period."
After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible.
In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction.
Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison, "a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery and not of slave-masters.
"No common wrong provoked our zeal,
The silken gauntlet which is thrown
In such a quarrel rings like