Compare the humor of these two short poems describing a wooing: _The
Courtin'_ (Lowell), _The Ballad of the Oysterman_ (Holmes). Discuss the
ideals of these four poems: _A Psalm of Life_ (Longfellow), _For an
Autograph_ (Lowell), _An Autograph_ (Whittier), _The Chambered Nautilus_
(Holmes).
What difference in the mental characteristics of the authors do these two
retrospective poems show: _My Lost Youth_ (Longfellow), _Memories_
(Whittier)? For a more complete answer to this question, compare the girls
in these two poems: _Maidenhood_ (Longfellow):--
"Maiden, with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies,"
and _In School Days_ (Whittier), beginning with the lines where he says of
the winter sun long ago:--
"It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving."
Matthew Arnold, that severe English critic, called one of these poems
perfect of its kind, and Oliver Wendell Holmes cried over one of them. The
student who reads these carefully is entitled to rely on his own judgment,
without verifying which poem Arnold and Holmes had in mind.
Compare Longfellow's ballads: _The Skeleton in Armor_, _The Birds of
Killingworth_, and _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, with Whittier's _Skipper
Ireson's Ride_, _Cassandra Southwick_, and _Maud Muller_.
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