Poems of Nature, part 4, Snow Bound etc

▮Project Gutenberg EBook, Snow Bound and Others by John Greenleaf Whittier Volume II., The Works of Whittier: Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent, Religious Poems?#16 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: Snow Bound and Others, From Poems of Nature,
Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems Volume II., The Works of Whittier
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: Dec, 2005 [EBook #9571]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 2, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SNOW BOUND AND OTHERS ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected] ]
POEMS OF NATURE
POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT
RELIGIOUS POEMS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
SNOW-BOUND?MY TRIUMPH?IN SCHOOL-DAYS?MY BIRTHDAY?RED RIDING-HOOD?RESPONSE?AT EVENTIDE?VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE?MY TRUST?A NAME?GREETING?CONTENTS?AN AUTOGRAPH?ABRAM MORRISON?A LEGACY
SNOW-BOUND.
A WINTER IDYL.
TO THE MEMORY
OF
THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES,
THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about two miles from us.
In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizard's "conjuring book," which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic printed in 1651, dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident,