High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall

Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,

The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,

The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,

And many a luminous jewel lone

- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,

Ruby, garnet, and amethyst

Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,

And oh, not the valleys of Hall

Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call

Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main.
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,

And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,

And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,

Calls through the valleys of Hall.

The Chattachoochee is one of many beautiful rivers of Georgia, which rise in the hills in the north and rush down toward the sea, spreading out into wider and calmer streams as they reach the plains.

1. Note that Lanier is trying to imitate the swiftness of the stream in the movement of the lines. You get this impression best by reading the poem aloud. Read the first stanza so as to bring out the headlong dash of the water.

2. When the lines seem too long for the sudden leaps of the stream, he even rhymes words within the lines in order to make the break more evident. Note, for example, "I hurry amain to reach the plain." Find other examples of this internal rhyme.

3. Another way of imitating the smoothness of the gliding water is to use words beginning with the same letter so that the voice will glide like the river; for instance, "the hills of Habersham." This is called alliteration. Find other instances of this in the poem.

4. The poet makes us feel that the river, in spite of the holding back of the rushes and waterweeds, the "laving” laurel and the "fondling" grass, is eager to reach the plains, where work awaits it. The trees, too, and the white quartz and dazzling jewels of its stony bed plead with it to remain. Which lines do you think give the loveliest picture of the stream and the country through which it flows? Why do you think it insists upon going? 5. Lanier is evidently thinking of life's constant call to us. How do you think the river's action is like ours in life?

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

I WANDERED lonely where the pine trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,

And, guided by its sweet

Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
Lifted their glad surprise,

While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea breeze,
And snowdrifts lingered under April skies.

As, pausing o'er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged, and pent,
Which yet find room,

Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day,

And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

The trailing arbutus or mayflower grows in the woods and in "narrow dells" between rocky hillsides of New England and New York and in rare spots elsewhere. The vine trails over the ground, pushing its leathery leaves up through the fallen leaves and boughs, and blooming in early spring, in clusters of delicately tinted, fragrant flowers.

1. The flower causes Whittier to think of the lives of people. What kind of people?

2. What color is suggested by "tinted like a shell"?

3. In several ways Whittier suggests the very early arrival of the arbutus. What are these ways?

4. What do these words mean?

barricade clogged

pent

cumber

ungenial

SNOW-BOUND

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

I. THE SNOWSTORM

THE sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of lifeblood in the sharpened face,

The coming of the snowstorm told.

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The wind blew east; we heard the roar

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Of Ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,

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The cock his crested helmet bent

And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow;
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window frame,
And through the glass the clothesline posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on;
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake and pellicle
All day the hoary meteor fell;

And when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,
A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corncrib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

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