doubt, the best are perhaps _Our Master_, _Chapel of the Hermits_, and
_Eternal Goodness_; one stanza from the last of which is familiar;

"I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift,
Beyond his love and care."

But from politics and war Whittier turned gladly to sing the homely
life of the New England country-side. His rural ballads and idyls are
as genuinely American as any thing that our poets have written, and
have been recommended, as such, to English working-men by Whittier's
co-religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is probably
_Maud Muller_, whose closing couplet has passed into proverb. _Skipper
Ireson's Ride_ is also very current. Better than either of them, as
poetry, is _Telling the Bees_. But Whittier's masterpiece in work of a
descriptive and reminiscent kind is _Snow-Bound_, 1866, a New England
fireside idyl which in its truthfulness recalls the _Winter Evening_ of
Cowper's _Task_ and Burns's _Cotter's Saturday Night_, but in sweetness
and animation is superior to either of them. Although in some things a
Puritan of the Puritans, Whittier has never forgotten that he is also a
Friend, and several of his ballads and songs have been upon the subject
of the early Quaker persecutions in Massachusetts. The most impressive
of these is _Cassandra Southwick_. The latest of them, the _King's
Missive_, originally contributed to the _Memorial History of Boston_ in
1880, and reprinted the next year in a volume with other poems, has
been the occasion of a rather lively controversy. The _Bridal of
Pennacook_, 1848, and the _Tent on the Beach_, 1867, which contain some
of his best work, were series of ballads told by different narrators,
after the fashion of Longfellow's _Tales of a Wayside Inn_. As an