The household is shut in from the outside world by the snow, and
there is nothing else to distract the attention from the picture of
isolated Puritan life. There is not another poet in America who has
produced such a masterpiece under such limitations. One prose writer,
Hawthorne, in _The Scarlet Letter_, had indeed taken even more unpromising
materials and achieved one of the greatest successes in English romance,
but in this special narrow field Whittier has not yet been surpassed by
poets.
The sense of isolation and what painters would call "the atmosphere" are
conveyed in lines like these:--
"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost line back with tropic heat;
And ever when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed."
In such a focus he shows the life of the household; the mother, who often
left her home to attend sick neighbors, now:--
"... seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment, more than wealth,"
the uncle:--
".
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