_Laus Deo_, thrilling with the ancient Hebrew spirit: "Loud and long Lift the old exulting song, Sing with Miriam by the sea-- He has cast the mighty down, Horse and rider sink and drown, He hath triumphed gloriously." Of his poems distinctly relating to the events of the civil war, the best, or at all events the most popular, is _Barbara Frietchie_. _Ichabod_, expressing the indignation of the Free Soilers at Daniel Webster's seventh of March speech in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law, is one of Whittier's best political poems, and not altogether unworthy of comparison with Browning's _Lost Leader_. The language of Whittier's warlike lyrics is biblical, and many of his purely devotional pieces are religious poetry of a high order and have been included in numerous collections of hymns. Of his songs of faith and doubt, the best are perhaps _Our Master_, _Chapel of the Hermits_, and _Eternal Goodness_; one stanza from the last of which is familiar; "I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift, Beyond his love and care." But from politics and war Whittier turned gladly to sing the homely life of the New England country-side. His rural ballads and idyls are as genuinely American as any thing that our poets have written, and have been recommended, as such, to English working-men by Whittier's co-religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is probably _Maud Muller_, whose closing couplet has passed into proverb. _Skipper Ireson's Ride_ is also very current. Better than either of them, as poetry, is _Telling the Bees_. But Whittier's masterpiece in work of a descriptive and reminiscent kind is _Snow-Bound_, 1866, a New England fireside idyl which in its truthfulness recalls the _Winter Evening_ of Cowper's _Task_ and Burns's _Cotter's Saturday Night_, but in sweetness and animation is superior to either of them. Although in some things a Puritan of the Puritans, Whittier has never forgotten that he is also a Friend, and several of his ballads and songs have been upon the subject of the early Quaker persecutions in Massachusetts. The most impressive of these is _Cassandra Southwick_. The latest of them, the _King's Missive_, originally contributed to the _Memorial History of Boston_ in 1880, and reprinted the next year in a volume with other poems, has been the occasion of a rather lively controversy. The _Bridal of Pennacook_, 1848, and the _Tent on the Beach_, 1867, which contain some of his best work, were series of ballads told by different narrators, after the fashion of Longfellow's _Tales of a Wayside Inn_. As an artist in verse, Whittier is strong and fervid, rather than delicate or rich. He uses only a few metrical forms--by preference the eight-syllabled rhyming couplet-- "Maud Muller on a summer's day Raked the meadow sweet with hay," etc.