The name is absent

Whittier’s Critical Creed         45

A green-waved slope of meadow

A slumberous stretch of mountainland

A vale-fringed river, winding to its rest

Such are the pictures which the thought of thee,
O friend, awakeneth,-

These images taken from familiar Essex county scenes are
expanded to connote the general theme of peace and beauty.
By imaginative association Whittier links the various scenes
with the feelings he had for his friend, for only that way
could the hidden virtues be expressed with concrete sense
appeal. Here, justifiably, external physical beauty comple-
ments and heightens the moral beauty of man’s inner
nature.

How successfully Whittier could apply his beliefs to poetry
may be seen by an examination of “Telling the Bees.” The
story hinges on a local Essex county superstition that a
death in the family would drive away the bees and the
custom of draping the hives in black mourning colors to
prevent this. The narrative itself records the delayed visit of
a young man to the farmhouse of his beloved Mary. The
tone of the poem is informal, almost conversational, and
Whittier relates the tale as if he and the reader were re-
walking the ground on which it took place. In the first lines,
directly addressing this reader and insisting that he follow
the scene closely, Whittier points out:

Here is the place; right over the hill

Runs the path I took;

You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred

And the poplars tall;

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