At Sundown. By John Greenleaf Whittier. (Longmans.)— This is a
reprint, with some additions, of a volume which was privately printed in 1890. Whittier's place among poets has been settled, we fancy, by a fairly general consent. His view of life was not wide,—it cannot be said of him, as Matthew Arnold said of Sophocles, that "he saw life whole." But his vision was clear; it was as little dimmed as any man's ever was by " earth-born clouds." The poems here show, perhaps, some falling-off in technical skill (" The Vow of Washington," which was in a way written to order, does so in a notable degree), but the tenderness, the wide charity, the cheerful hope with which the aged poet looked forward to the future, are peculiarly manifest. The last stanzas of "Burning Drift-Wood" aro as chara2teristic as any- thing in the volume :-
"Far more than all I dared to dream, Unsought before my door I see On wings of lire and steed° of steam The world's groat wonders come to me,
And holier signs unmarked before, Of Lova to sock and Power to save,— The righting of the wronged and poor, The man evolving from the slave ; And life, no longer chance or fate, Safe iu the prac'ous Fatherhood. I fold o'or.wcaried hands and wait, In full assurance of the good.
And well the waiting time must be, Though brief or loeg its granted days. If Fa to and Hope and Charity • Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze.
And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, Whose love my heart has comfortql, And, sharing all my j ve, has shared
31y tender inemor.os of the dead,—
Dear souls who left us lonely bore, Bound on 1114r last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near,
Where every bark has tailing,rooni.
I know the solemn mon'itono Of *Owe calling unto me ; I know from whence the airs have blown
That whisper of the Eternal Be."
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