Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now-
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear like them the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,

Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!"

Words like these the world will not willingly let die.

Whittier's deep and tranquil spirituality not only finds expression in his distinctively re

ligious poetry, but it passes beyond this and pervades more or less fully the whole body of his work. In it there is no Calvinistic gloom and severity but peace, light, love, and childlike trust. In the religious poetry of the New England Quaker we find a mingling of Puritan and Friend, of Justice and Love, of the stern creed of the dauntless Genevan and the simple faith of leather-clad George Fox. It was John Robinson, the pastor in Leyden of the men and women of the Mayflower, who uttered the pregnant sentence, "There is more light and more truth in God's blessed Word than has yet been revealed." The great gulf that is fixed between the dogmatic horrors of Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," the typical poem of the old New England, and the winsome inclusiveness of the simple creed of the Quaker poet demonstrates the significant fact that for two centuries of American life the thoughts of man had been widening with the process of the suns. The bells from a thousand steeples had rung out the darkness of the dismal days of The Scarlet Letter and the Salem witchcraft. In the poetry of Whittier we live in the brighter light of a nobler day. And as we walk over the mountains and through the valleys of life we can stand more firmly and fight better because our souls have

been refreshed as we tarried with this sweetvoiced, clean-souled poet by the fountains of life abundant.

Although there are still among us those who remember the poets of the New England renaissance as they came and went among their fellows, it was more than a quarter of a century ago that the last of that shining company passed to where beyond these voices there is peace. Emerson, the serene earthquake scholar of Concord, and Longfellow, the gentle singer of our national springtime, died in the early eighties. Lowell, the youngest of the group, born over a century ago, February 22, 1819, died in the old elm-shaded home of his boyhood in 1891. A year later ended the tranquil life of the militant, serene hermit of Amesbury. In 1894 the lambent soul of the genial old autocrat, "the last leaf on the tree," felt the gentle touch of the breath of an eternal morning. To-day our souls thrill with the mighty impulses of a tremendous age. New voices are in the air and eyes that once were holden are seeing new visions. But not all that has come to us from other generations should be allowed to gather mold among the forgotten archives of the past. The writer who deals with the fundamentals of life and of character has eternal youth.

From the

quiet cottage at Amesbury have come lines heard around the world. Generations yet unborn will through the words of John Greenleaf Whittier learn the truths of God. Though dead he yet speaketh.

"There is no end for souls like his;

No night for children of the day."

V

THE ART OF BEING HUMAN

ONCE when Father Taylor was lying upon what was supposed to be his deathbed, some one said, "Well, Father, you'll soon be with the angels." Quick as a flash the old preacher replied: "I don't want angels. I want folks." After all, human sympathy is the quality which more than any other draws us to its possessor. We cannot help liking the person who has it. In some parts of the United States there is a provincialism which expresses an idea for which orthodox terminology is lacking. It is customary to speak commendatorily of a person as common. This is almost another word for human. Happy is he who meets the "common" man or woman. He whose experiences have given him human sympathy has that which is worth more to the world than the most minute and abstruse knowledge gathered in classroom and libraries.

Dean Shaler once said, "I have known many an ignorant sailor or backwoodsman who, because he has been brought into sympathetic contact with the primitive qualities of his