"....Like her, because they love him"

Oh, that is a lovely glimpse of love. It tells so much with a few words -- the descriptions of the toeing of the snow and the hand in the apron are priceless. The final line (does that copyright mean we can't even quote? Well, I'm going to...)

"He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him."

It is poignant, really. There are ONLY A FEW who will really love you. How great it would be for everyone to find that special person as early in life as this couple did. <sigh> Thanks for sharing this Letty. How did you happen across it?

Piffka,

My father not only played guitar and sang, he recited poetry to all of us. I memorized this poem as a child. Whittier disappeared from many of the anthologies later, because so many critics deemed him a "lesser" poet.

Yes, Piffka. I love the imagery created of the little girl. It is interesting to me that I posted this poem on another forum just to determine something for myself.

Thank you for responding, Piffka.

Letty, you sound mysterious! What did you determine???

This idea of the greater and lesser poets is interesting. I was thinking just the same thing, looking at an anthology I have that has a long, long poem by Sylvia Plath and nothing at all by Millay. Different eras have different ideas of what is good, I think.

Piffka, I determined that one is more likely to get responses here, as opposed to the other site. It didn't use to be that way, and I was trying to do my bit to help save the forum.
Poetry has always been a favorite medium for me to test my philosophies, but it doesn't do much good to post, if one's ideas cannot be shared. I think that rhyming poetry fell out of favor when Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass. Suddenly, his poetry became very avant garde...not that Whitman isn't excellent, you understand. I just feel that one should not necessarily discard the old to appreciate the new.

Sylvia Plath's poetry is so sad in light of her suicide. As I recall, "The Anecdote of the Bell Jar" was very wistful.

I suppose that one day rap music will be seen as poetry of the people.

It's bootiful. Have to go, but wanted to get that in and also help me find it later.

Hurry back, neat thing

Sounds like a wonderful childhood, to have your father be so musically inclined... and also to encourage you to memorize poetry. It then becomes a part of you, I think.

Whittier may be out of favor... but in this anthology I spoke of, Top 500 Poems, there are two of his poems highlighted: Barbara Frietchie (#282) and Snow-Bound; a Winter Idyl (#479).

I admit, Snow-Bound is so long (pages & pages) that I have not yet read it -- a short attention span is my failing. Barbara Frietchie, I have read before, my mother often quoted me this well-known line:

"Shoot if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said.

Whittier has the rural sensibility and love of the simple life that I am attracted to. Thanks for bringing him to the attention of me and this forum.

Are there any other Whittier poems you'd like to add?

Letty, I loved the poem. The description of the school as a beggar sleeping added to the poignancy.

As Piffka said, it tells of true love that is ageless, as the young girl has been dead for forty years, although I'm not sure they were married.

The shy toeing of the snow and the little movements of the hands are so evocative of innocence.

I also loved the bravery of a shy young person confessing her love.

Di, I not only love that imagery, I think about the philosophy. That child that Whittier depicts was just as you say, an encounter with innocence. Whittier was very careful not to cast his remembered child as one who patronized him, either. She spelled the word correctly in spite of the fact that she "....hated to go above him."

Piffka, I'll have to check around about other Whittier poems. That particular one just came to mind because I saw somewhere, that there is only one"one-roomed" school house left in America.

John Greenleaf Whittier my favorite Quaker writer and so appropriate for this time in our very dangerous world. Thanks Letty for helping me remember.

Glad that I touched a chord, Jo. To be candid, I hadn't realized that Whittier was a Quaker

John Greeleaf Whittier

Whittier California is named after him and the college of Whittier in California is named after him, the college where Richard Nixon gradtuated and home of the Nixon Library. Nixon was raised as a Quaker but didn't practice Quaker teachings. Perhaps if he did he would have faired better in life