Kathleen, a ballad by Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote another poem about a young woman named Kathleen. For some reason, Whittier referred to Kathleen as a ballad rather than a poem.

Here's his comment on Kathleen:

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

Here's Kathleen's first stanza:

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

As he did with another poem, Maud Muller, Whittier begins Kathleen with a woman's name; however, unlike Maud Muller, the woman whose name begins Kathleen is not the woman whom the poem's about. Instead, she is the woman to whom the ballad is being sung.

Here's a listing of all Whittier's poems on Project Gutenberg.

Maud Muller is a dissatisfied maiden

Stanzas three through six of Whittier's poem, Maud Muller, contain a powerful message.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But, when she glanced to the far-off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast--

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

Muller was happy until she "glanced" at a distant town. That glance changed her glee to a frown. The glance silenced her song and stirred a "nameless longing." She hoped "For something better than she had known." Of special interest are Whittier's words that Muller "hardly dared to own" her wish.

The most powerful word in the last quote is possible the most powerful word in the whole poem: own. It's one thing to make a wish; it's quite another to "own" a wish. It's a much stronger form of attachment. It reveals how much she would like her life to change, a life she's been dissatisfied with. That dissatisfaction is shown in this line: "For something better than she had known."

Wanting more than one has is a common human condition, one that Whittier reveals in an uncommon way.

Stress in poetry

One of the more difficult concepts to understand when both reading and writing poetry is the concept of stress. Stress applies to syllables rather than to words. It's also called either accent or beat. To illustrate the concept, two lines from the poem Maud Muller will be used.

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

The first line contains eight syllables. "Muller" and "summer's" contain two syllables; the rest contain one. When I read that line, my voice rose when I said "Maud," the first syllable in "Muller," the first syllable in "summer's," and day. The syllables in which my voice did not rise are the unstressed syllables. This lines stresses go this way: up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The second line contains seven syllables. Only one of its words, "meadow," contains one syllable. My voice rose when I said "Raked," the first syllable in "meadow," "sweet," and "hay." It too reads like a roller coaster: up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The rhythm is like doing toe raises. Up, down, up, down. Stress, unstress, stress, unstress.

When the first of two consecutive syllables is stressed and the second one is unstressed, it's called a trochee.

Compare John Greenleaf Whittier's poem with this well-known nursery rhyme:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

In Jack and Jill's first line, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the first one. In the second line, however, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the second one ("fetch"). The last two sentences in the first stanza have the same "meter" as the first two. (A stanza is a set of lines that have been grouped together. A four-lined stanza is called a quatrain.)

As an interesting aside, rhyming lines that end on a stressed syllable are called masculine rhymes; whereas, rhyming lines that end on an unstressed syllable are called feminine rhymes. In Jack and Jill, as the second and fourth lines end in an unstressed syllable and rhyme, they're feminine rhymes. If the first and lines lines had rhymed, they would be masculine rhymes, as they end in stressed syllables.

The best way to learn about stress is to read poems aloud. Listen for the syllables you say louder and those you say lower.

You can learn more about poetry's basic elements here.

A poem worth reading

In the 19th century, a poet named John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a beautiful poem titled Maud Muller. It's about a woman (Muller) and a man who meet once, briefly, but never forget that meeting.

Here's the poem's first two lines:

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

The poem begins with Maud in a meadow on a warm, sunlit day, raking hay. How do I know the day is sunny and warm? I used my imagination, which this poem invites. If the weather were not warm and sunny, I doubt that Maud would be doing any raking. It's not easy to rake wet hay.

It's interesting that instead of writing that Maud "Raked the meadow full of hay," Whittier wrote "sweet with hay." Whittier writes not for the few who gain pleasure from reading esoteric, difficult to decipher poems, but for the many who enjoy reading poems within whose content lies a deceptively powerful simplicity.

Here are the poem's third and fourth lines:

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

It's obvious that Maud was not a woman of financial wealth. Her wealth was of another kind, one that cannot be bought in a store.

Whittier's skill with rhyme enhances the poem's effect, creating an aura about it that would have been much more difficult to effect if the words were written in a non-poetic form.

At this time in American history, when corporate greed and government mismanagement have dampened many people's spirits, it's a good time to be thankful for the works of men like Whittier, who've created works of beauty whose glow no cloud can lessen.