From
boyhood he was always fragile and ailing, could not sleep well at night,
and would repeat poetry to himself (for he knew any quantity of it,
without making an effort to memorize it) until he fell asleep again: yet
to what an age he lived, and how much work he accomplished!
I am tempted here to quote from an essay by David A. Wasson, written
nearly thirty years ago:--
"God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous and yet ripe and
spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first that it
_must_ lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience,
and, secondly, that it _must_ work these up into some form of
melodious completeness. History and the world gave him Quakerism,
America, and Rural Solitude; and through this solitude went winding the
sweet, old Merrimac Stream, the river that we would not wish to forget,
even by the waters of the river of life! And it is into these elements
that his genius, with its peculiar vital simplicity and intensity,
strikes root. Historic reality, the great _facts_ of his time, are
the soil in which he grows, as they are with all natures of depth and
energy." "We did not wish," said Goethe, "to learn, but to live."
The anti-slavery movement originated with the Quakers. It seems to have
been their mission in America. Benjamin Lundy was a Quaker: Garrison and
his friends were non-resistants, which is political Quakerism.
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