Henry Our first poet to consecrate his life to art and culture and to justify that consecration by a genius and character that called out love as well as admiration, was born at Portland, Maine, from a New England family of the best type. He was graduated from Bowdoin in 1825, the youngest member of the class in which, by one of those singular chances that frequently associate the rare spirits of an age in some fortuitous bond of circumstance, was Nathaniel Hawthorne. His home was in every way favorable to the development of a love for books, but our country at that time offered no career to the merely literary scholar. Fortune befriended him, however (or else the authorities of his alma mater were gifted with the second sight), for he was offered the chair of Modern Languages at a very early age, and spent three years in preliminary study in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, assimilating the refining impulses and serenely passing by the temptations of a foreign residence in early youth. Emulating Irving, he, too, wrote his "sketch book," "Outre Mer." After five years at Bowdoin he was called to Harvard. His professorship there he retained till 1854, when he resigned to be succeeded by Lowell. With the exception of the tragic death of his second wife in 1861 (her dress having caught fire from a candle), his life was peaceful and uneventful except as marked by the appearance of his volumes of poems. His success was the quiet, natural outcome of worth and a refined, delicate talent. His literary development was equally sound and normal. A true American and a quiet, constant scholar, he assimilated culture from nature and from books, and rendered with equal grace the legends of medieval Europe and the traditions of his own New England. Beginning with "Voices of the Night" (1837), his gracious and cultured verse was produced without haste or feverish excitement during the rest of his life. "Evangeline” and “Hiawatha" are perhaps the best muniments to his title of poet. His ballads are general favorites, not only from the truth and simplicity of the sentiment, but from the grace with which the sentiment is embodied. A certain picturesqueness rather than rugged power is the note of his descrip tions. "He so loved truthe and honour, freedome and courtesie," that he could not understand the bad in man. Late in life he translated Dante in a thoroughly adequate manner, and a part of his service to America is that he introduced us to the romanticism of medieval Europe. So many of his poems are favorites in the general memory that it is difficult to particularize. Among them, however, are the "Skeleton in Armor," "My Lost Youth," the "Children's Hour," the "Arsenal at Springfield," the "Village Blacksmith," "Evangeline," the "Tales of a Wayside Inn,” and the “Building of the Ship.” THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS A mist was driving down the British Channel, And through the window-panes, on floor and panel, It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and Dover, To see the French war-steamers speeding over Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions, Their cannon, through the night, Holding their breath, had watched in grim defiance The sea-coast opposite. And now they roared, at drum-beat, from their stations Each answering each, with morning salutations, And down the coast, all taking up the burden As if to summon from his sleep the Warden Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure, No drum-beat from the wall, No morning gun from the black fort's embrazure, No more, surveying with an eye impartial The long line of the coast, Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room; And, as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, He did not pause to parley or dissemble, But smote the Warden hoar; Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited 1 The Duke of Wellington. Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. "Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line John Green - From the "Fable for Critics" (Lowell). It is impossible to conceive two poets more widely contrasted in character and temperament than Poe and Whittier. The latter was born on a rocky farm in leaf Whittier, Haverhill, Massachusetts, where labor was the 1807-1892. law of life. His schooling was limited to the few weeks' attendance at the district school in the winters, which is the usual allowance of the farmer boy, and six months in the Haverhill Academy. The family were Friends, and owned about twenty books, most of them journals of ministers of the Society. The boy's first introduction to poetry was through a volume of Burns's poems lent him by an acquaintance. As a young man he was connected with the antislavery movement as writer and editor for newspapers. In 1831 he published "Legends of New England in Prose and Verse," a series of tales, and in 1836" Mogg Megone," a long poetical tale. While connected with the antislavery society, he wrote a number of short poems, which were collected in 1849 under the title of "Voices of Freedom." Although his most vigorous verse continued to be inspired by the antislavery cause, “Lays of My Home," 1843, and “Home Ballads,” 1860, contributed more to give him reputation as a poet. After the war appeared "Snow-Bound," 1866, and the |