,
The shining ones with plumes of snow!

I know the errand of their feet,
I know what mighty work is theirs;
I can but lift up hands unmeet,
The threshing-floors of God to beat,
And speed them with unworthy prayers.

I will not dream in vain despair
The steps of progress wait for me
The puny leverage of a hair
The planet's impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.

The loss, if loss there be, is mine,
And yet not mine if understood;
For one shall grasp and one resign,
One drink life's rue, and one its wine,
And God shall make the balance good.

Oh power to do! Oh baffled will!
Oh prayer and action! ye are one.
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil
The harder task of standing still,
And good but wished with God is done!

1862.

SNOW-BOUND. A WINTER IDYL.

TO THE MEMORY

OF

THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES,

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.

The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to
in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my
uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district
school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome
guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New
Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic,
eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes
made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort
in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room,
while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the
doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the
Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and
spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and
Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as
fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon,
but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red
marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her
titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend
of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a
tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is
inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and lea