An idea of the execrable nature of his versification may be obtained from a few specimens. Upon the passing of a severe law against Quakers, he relieves his mind in this wise:-- "Awake, awake, O arm o' th' Lord, awake! Thy sword up take; Cast what would thine forgetful of thee make, Into the lake. Awake, I pray, O mighty Jah! awake, Make all the world before thy presence quake, Not only earth, but heaven also shake." Another poem, entitled "A Song of the Mercies and Deliverances of the Lord," begins thus:-- "Had not the Lord been on our side, May Israel now say, We were not able to abide The trials of that day: When men did up against us rise, With fury, rage, and spite, Hoping to catch us by surprise, Or run us down by night." An opponent's poetry is lashed by Ellwood in such beautiful stanzas as the following:-- "So _flat_, so _dull_, so _rough_, so _void of grace_, Where _symphony_ and _cadence_ have no place; So full of _chasmes_ stuck with _prosie pegs_, Whereon his _tired_ Muse might rest her legs, (Not having wings) and take new breath, that then She might with much adoe hop on again." A striking peculiarity of Whittier's poetry is the exceedingly small range of his rhymes and metres. He is especially fond of the four-foot iambic line, and likes to rhyme successive or alternate lines in a wofully monotonous and see-saw manner. These are the characteristics of much of the lyric poetry of a hundred years ago, and especially distinguish the verses of Burns and Ellwood,--the first poets the boy Whittier read. Burns, especially, he learned by heart, and there can be no doubt that the Ayrshire ploughman gave to the mind of his brother-ploughman of Essex its life-direction and coloring,--as respects the swing of rhythm and rhyme at least. Indeed, we shall presently find him contributing to the _Haverhill Gazette_ verses in the Scotch dialect. His introduction to the poetry of Burns was in this wise: He was one afternoon gathering in hay on the farm, when by good hap a wandering peddler stopped and took from his pack a copy of Burns, which was eagerly purchased by the poetical Quaker boy. Alluding to the circumstance afterward in his poem, "Burns," he says:-- "How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow! Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping, The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping." By the reading of Burns his eyes were opened, he says, to the beauty in homely things. In familiar and humble things he found the "tender idyls of the heart." But the wanton and the ribald lines of the Scotch poet found no entrance to his pure mind.[10] [Footnote 10: See Appendix II.]