. The poets' New England. urrying came on the defenseless landThe insurgent waters with tumultuous thought and feeling and desire, I said,Love, laughter and the exultant joy of songHave ebbed from me forever! Suddenly oer meThey swept again from their deep ocean bed,And in a tumult of delight, and strong As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me. Longfellows feeling for nature often comes outmore genuinely in his letters and diary than itdoes in his poetry. The exigencies of rhyme andmeter seemed in a way to handicap the spontaneityof his emotions. He was not certainly a keen ob-ser
. The poets' New England. urrying came on the defenseless landThe insurgent waters with tumultuous thought and feeling and desire, I said,Love, laughter and the exultant joy of songHave ebbed from me forever! Suddenly oer meThey swept again from their deep ocean bed,And in a tumult of delight, and strong As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me. Longfellows feeling for nature often comes outmore genuinely in his letters and diary than itdoes in his poetry. The exigencies of rhyme andmeter seemed in a way to handicap the spontaneityof his emotions. He was not certainly a keen ob-server of nature, nor did he have such enthusiasm foraccuracy as to feel the necessity of always seeing theregions he was intending to describe; else he wouldnot so joyously have welcomed the diorama of theMississippi, down which he proceeded to make hisAcadians sail. In fact, he devoutly believed that animaginative picture of a scene in nature was likely tobe better, because more idealized than a picture drawnfrom the o 1^ GQ o o H o< CO THE POETS NEW ENGLAND 57 All of New Englands poets have been aroused attimes to enthusiasm for the sea. I have alreadyspoken of Whittiers poem, Hampton Beach. Itrecords a brief day by the sea. With the same reverence that Emerson felt for na-tures relationing of her beautiful objects, he declares: I bear with me No token stone nor glittering shell,But long and oft shall memory tellOf this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the sea. Upon this same beach or its continuation, SalisburyBeach, the tent was pitched in The Tent on theBeach. At the time this poem was written there wereno cottages on the beach, and those who wished toenjoy an outing by the sea carried thither their tentsto luxuriate for a season in the delights of living heartto heart with nature. In the course of this series ofpoems and interludes Whittier gives with his accus-tomed painters eye numerous lovely pictures of thescenery at this point. Hampton Beach is the continua
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