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XI. “but strong of will.”
In one of
Whittier's finest ballads he gives a touch of feminine character worth considering in a world where so many of the young or foolish still hold it to be the perfection of womanhood to be characterless.
The phrase is to be found in “
Amy Wentworth,” one of the few of his ballads which have no direct historical foundation, but simply paint a period.
The scene is ]aid in the proud little colonial town of
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with its high-bred ways and its stately ante-Revolutionary traditions — such traditions as became an Episcopalian and loyal colony, although nothing now remains to commemorate their sway except a few fine old houses, some family portraits, and this ballad of
Whittier's. His heroine, gently nurtured, has given her heart to the captain of a fishing-smack, and the poet thus describes the situation:
Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
With stately stairways, worn
By feet of old colonial knights
And ladies gentle born;
