When the reader, who has worked gloomily along through Whittier's anti-slavery and miscellaneous poems, reaches the "Songs of Labor," he feels at once the breath of a fresher spirit,--as a traveller who has been toiling for weary leagues through sandy deserts bares his brow with delight to the coolness and shade of a green forest through whose thick roof of leaves the garish sunlight scarcely sifts. We feel that in these poems a new departure has been made. The wrath of the reformer has expended itself, and the poet now returns, with mind elevated and more tensely keyed by his moral warfare, to the study of the beautiful in native themes and in homely life. "The Shipbuilders," "The Shoemakers," "The Fishermen," and "The Huskers" are genuine songs; and more shame to the craftsmen celebrated if they do not get them set to music, and sing them while at their work. One cannot help feeling that Walt Whitman's call for some one to make songs for American laborers had already been met in a goodly degree by these spirited "Songs of Labor." What workman would not be glad to carol such stanzas as the following, if they were set to popular airs? "Hurrah! the seaward breezes Sweep down the bay amain; Heave up, my lads, the anchor! Run up the sail again! Leave to the lubber landsmen The rail-car and the steed: The stars of heaven shall guide us, The breath of heaven shall speed." _The Fishermen._ "Ho! workers of the old time styled The Gentle Craft of Leather! Young brothers of the ancient guild, Stand forth once more together! Call out again your long array, In the olden merry manner! Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, Fling out your blazoned banner! Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glossy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!" _The Shoemakers._ The publication of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life," in 1853, marks (as has been said) the period of culture and of religious doubt,--doubt which ended in trust. In this period we have such genuine undidactic poems as "The Barefoot Boy." "Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace." Also, such fine poems as "Flowers in Winter" and "To My Old Schoolmaster;" as well as the excellent ballads, "Maud Muller," "Kathleen," and "Mary Garvin."