[Illustration: WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE IN WINTER (SCENE OF "SNOW BOUND")] His greatest poem, the one by which he will probably be chiefly known to posterity, is _Snow-Bound_, which describes the life of a rural New England household. At the beginning of this poem of 735 lines, the coming of the all-enveloping snowstorm, with its "ghostly finger tips of sleet" on the window-panes, is the central event, but we soon realize that this storm merely serves to focus intensely the New England life with which he was familiar. 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:-- "... innocent of books, Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, * * * * * A simple, guileless, childlike man, Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds," the aunt, who:-- "Found peace in love's unselfishness," the sister:-- "A full rich nature, free to trust, Truthful and even sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice." Some read Snow-Bound for its pictures of nature and some for its still more remarkable portraits of the members of that household. This poem has achieved for the New England fireside what Burns accomplished for the hearths of Scotland in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_.