=Discussion.= 1. What picture do the first two stanzas give you? 2. To whom does “I” refer? 3. Point out the comparison and the things compared in stanza 1; in stanza 2. 4. Why does the poet use the word “host” when he has already spoken of a “crowd”? 5. Explain the peculiar fitness of the word “sprightly.” 6. What lines particularly express life and gayety? THE TRAILING ARBUTUS JOHN G. 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 snow-drifts 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. NOTES AND QUESTIONS =Biography.= John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was born near the little town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the same county as Salem, the birthplace of Hawthorne. The old farmhouse in which Whittier was born was built by the poet’s great-great-grandfather. It still stands to mark the site of the old home. His family were Quakers, sturdy of stature as of character. Whittier’s boyhood was in complete contrast to that of Lowell or Longfellow. He led the life of a typical New England farm boy, used to hard work, no luxuries, and few pleasures. His library consisted of practically one book, the family Bible, which was later supplemented by a copy of Burns’s poems, loaned him by the district schoolmaster. Whittier is often compared with Burns in the simple homeliness of his style, his patriotism, his fiery indignation at wrong, and his sympathy with the humble and the oppressed. =Discussion.= 1. Where did the poet find “the trailing spring flower”? 2. Have you found it? Where? When? 3. What beautiful thought came to the poet while he bent over the arbutus? 4. Have you known lowly lives that made the earth happier by their presence? 5. The poet _found_ the lowly flower that lends “sweetness to the ungenial day”; can we find the lowly person who “makes the earth happier”? 6. What does Nature teach through the lowly trailing arbutus? 7. What other selections by this author have you read? =Phrases= bitter East, 60, 2 glad surprise, 60, 9 clogged, and pent, 60, 14 ungenial day, 60, 17 TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY ROBERT BURNS