of Memory and immortal Zeus, but of
those Muses in drab and scoop-bonnets who are daughters of Memory and
George Fox. Some lines of the "Brown of Ossawatomie" we are thinking of
now. We can regard them only as a reminiscence of his special Quaker
culture.

With the "Home Ballads," published in 1863, dawns fully his final
period,--long may it last! This is the epoch of Poetic Realism. Not that
he abandons or falls away from his moral ideal. The fact is quite
contrary. He has so entirely established himself in that ideal that he
no longer needs strivingly to assert it,--any more than Nature needs to
pin upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her
formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate
poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms.
The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as
contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent
reality, and all that is in him, though it were the faith of seraphs,
will go into the representation. The sole condition is that he shall
_select his subject from native, spontaneous choice_,--that is, leave
his genius to make its own elections. Let one, whose genius so invites
him, paint but a thistle, and paint it as faithfully as Nature grows it;
yet, if the Ten Commandments are meantime uttering themselves in his
thought, he will make the thistle-top a Sinai.

It is this poetic realism that Whittier has now, in a high
degree, attained. Calm and sure, lofty in humility, strong in
childlikeness,--renewing the play-instinct of the true poet in his
heart,--younger now than when he sat on his mother's knee,--chastened,
not darkened, by trial, and toil, and time,--illumined, poet-like, even
by sorrow,--he lives and loves, and chants the deep, homely beauty of
his lays. He is as genuine, as wholesome and real as sweet-flag and
clover. Even when he utters pure sentiment, as in that perfect lyric,
"My Psalm," or in the intrepid, exquisite humility--healthful and sound
as the odor of new-mown hay or balsam-firs--of "Andrew Rykman's Prayer,"
he maintains the same attitude of realism. He states God and inward
experience as he would state sunshine and the growth of grass. This,
with the devout depth of his nature, makes the rare beauty of his hymns
and poems of piety and trust. He does not try to _make_ the facts by
stating them; he does not try to embellish them; he only seeks to utter,
to