The name is absent

Whittier’s Critical Creed         37

the conflict between his religious training and his ardent
emotional spirit. In “Stanzas” he depicts the broken hearted
lover who cannot escape the powerful appeal of sensuous
beauty:

For Beauty hath a charming spell,
Upon the human will,

Though false the heart it veils so well,
It hath its homage still.⁹

Even more revealing are the pseudo-confessions of an opium
eater who rhapsodizes on the witchery of his former love:
“It is idle to talk of the superior attraction of intellectual
beauty, when compared with mere external loveliness . . .
the beauty of form and color, the grace of motion, the har-
mony of tone, are seen and felt and appreciated at once”
(Works, V, 284). Of course these two pieces are imitative of
the then prevailing literary modes and only imaginatively
reflect the young Quaker’s personal views on beauty; yet,
they do Irighhght part of the emotional struggle that must
have been taking place in his mind. Even though he
avowedly condemned the sensuous, he was intrigued by it.
Similarly, his early statements on art often emphasized its
divine mission and the supreme creativeness of the artist. For
a period he seemed to believe that the art of poetry could be
an end in itself, rising above the moral issues of life and exist-
ing in its own domain of fancy and imagination.¹⁰ He wrote
glowing tributes to Chatterton, Ossian, and Byron, echoing
their desire for one “high and haughty hour . . . One grasp
at fleeting power.”¹¹

In 1833 these romantic dreams were swept completely
away when Wliittier joined the abolitionist party. Previous
to this, along with his literary pursuits, Whittier’s activities
as an editor and politician had shown his sympathy for the
underprivileged and he had followed Garrison’s abolitionist

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