state them; and even in his most perfect verse they are not half so
melodious as they were in his soul.

All perfect poetry is simple statement of facts,--facts of history or of
imagination. Whoever thinks to create poetry by words, and inclose in
the verse a beauty which did not exist in his consciousness, has got
hopelessly astray.

This attitude of simple divine abiding in the present is beautifully
expressed in the opening stanzas of "My Psalm."

"I mourn no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

"The west winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

"No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.

"I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

"I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at the door."

It is, however, in his ballads that Whittier exhibits, not, perhaps, a
higher, yet a rarer, power than elsewhere,--a power, in truth, which is
very rare indeed. Already in the "Panorama" volume he had brought forth
three of these,--all good, and the tender pathos of that fine ballad of
sentiment, "Maud Muller," went to the heart of the nation. In how many
an imagination does the innocent maiden, with her delicate brown ankles,

"Rake the meadow sweet with hay,"

and

"The judge ride slowly down the lane"!

But though sentiment so simple and unconscious is rare, our poet has yet
better in store for us. He has developed of late years the precious
power of creating _homely beauty_,[14]--one of the rarest powers shown
in modern literature. Homely life-scenes, homely old sanctities and
heroisms, he takes up, delineates them with intrepid fidelity to their
homeliness, and, lo! there they are, beautiful as Indian corn, or as
ploughed land under an October sun! He has thus opened an inexhaustible
mine right here under our New-England feet. What will come of it no one
knows.

These poems of his are natural growths; they have their own circulation
of vital juices, their own peculiar properties; they smack of the soil,
are racy and strong and aromatic, like ground-j