Such were my thoughts many years ago at Amesbury, as I walked on the
banks of the Merrimac and watched the calm, clear current of the river,
as it hastened by, irresistible as time itself. I also reflected how
often the poet Whittier must have walked in that same path; how dear to
him must be that silent flood with its elm-trees, and great rolling
hills; and how in times of darkness and discouragement he must have come
to it for strength and consolation. The beauty of a river depends very
much on its clearness and purity. The Rhine and the Tiber are more
famous than the Merrimac; but their water is muddy and undrinkable.
Indeed the current of Whittier's life might not improperly be compared
to the river beside which he dwelt so long. Commencing in the pure
mountain air of the social and religious seclusion of his sect, the
difficulties and limitations, which in his case waited upon the
acquisition of knowledge, may well be compared to the passage through a
rocky and unfruitful region, leaping as it were from one granite boulder
to another; then no sooner has he gained depth and fulness from contact
with natures like his own than he is caught in the mill-wheels of a
great political revolution, he enters ardently into the anti-slavery
conflict--as he says of himself in the "Tent on the Beach,"
"And one there was a dreamer born,
Who with a mission to fulfill
Had left the muses' haunts to turn
The crank of an opinion mill"--
and finally having escaped past all expectation from this turmoil,
victorious and laurel-crowned, he goes calmly and steadily forward to
the end.
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