ft the old exulting song,
Sing with Miriam by the sea--
He has cast the mighty down,
Horse and rider sink and drown,
He hath triumphed gloriously."

Of his poems distinctly relating to the events of the civil war, the
best, or at all events the most popular, is _Barbara Frietchie_.
_Ichabod_, expressing the indignation of the Free Soilers at Daniel
Webster's seventh of March speech in defense of the {522} Fugitive
Slave Law, is one of Whittier's best political poems, and not
altogether unworthy of comparison with Browning's _Lost Leader_. The
language of Whittier's warlike lyrics is biblical, and many of his
purely devotional pieces are religious poetry of a high order and have
been included in numerous collections of hymns. Of his songs of faith
and doubt, the best are perhaps _Our Master_, _Chapel of the Hermits_,
and _Eternal Goodness_; one stanza from the last of which is familiar:

"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."

But from politics and war Whittier turned gladly to sing the homely
life of the New England country side. His rural ballads and idyls are
as genuinely American as any thing that our poets have written, and
have been recommended, as such, to English working-men by Whittier's
co-religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is probably
_Maud Muller_, whose closing couplet has passed into proverb. _Skipper
Ireson's Ride_ is also very current. Better than either of them, as
poetry, is _Telling the Bees_. But Whittier's masterpiece in work of a
descriptive and reminiscent kind is _Snow Bound_, 1866, a New England
fireside idyl which in its truthfulness recalls the _Winter Evening_ of
Cowper's _Task_ and Burns's _Cotter's Saturday Night_, but in sweetness
and animation is superior to either of them. Although in {523} some
things a Puritan of the Puritans, Whittier has never forgotten that he
is also a Friend, and several of his ballads and songs have been upon
the subject of the early Quaker persecutions in Massachusetts. The
most impressive of these is _Cassandra Southwick_. The latest of them,
the _King's Missive_, originally contributed to the _Memorial History
of Boston_ in 1880, and reprinted the next year in a volume with other
poems, has been the occasion of a rather lively controversy. The
_Bridal of Pennacook_, 1848, and the _Tent on the Beach_, 1867, which
contain some