The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:—

He hangs in shade the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night.

And all the way, to guide the chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. There is nothing in its way superior to it in our language. Many of his best pieces were originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There is a splendid Ode to Cromwell— worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet—which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the ‘soft Lydian airs’ of the poems that we have quoted:—