John Greenleaf Whittier

“ Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;— And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve ”

“ For man the living temple is The mercy-seat and cherubim, And all the holy mysteries, He bears with him. And most avails the prayer of love, Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs, And wearies Heaven for naught above Our common needs. Which brings to God's all-perfect will That trust of His undoubting child Whereby all seeming good and ill Are reconciled. And, seeking not for special signs Of favor, is content to fall Within the providence which shines And rains on all. Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned At noontime o'er the sacred word. Was it an angel or a fiend Whose voice be heard? ”

“ Beside that track of air and light, Weak as a child unweaned, At shut of day a Christian knight Upon his henchman leaned. The embers of the sunset's fires Along the clouds burned down; "I see," he said, "the domes and spires Of Norembega town." "Alack! the domes, O master mine, Are golden clouds on high; Yon spire is but the branchless pine That cuts the evening sky." "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these But chants and holy hymns?" "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees Though all their leafy limbs." ”

“ Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife! How vain do all things seem! My soul is in the past, and life To-day is but a dream. In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair. The eyes of memory will not sleep, Its ears are open still; And vigils with the past they keep Against my feeble will. And still the loves and joys of old Do evermore uprise; I see the flow of locks of gold, The shine of loving eyes! Ah me! upon another's breast Those golden locks recline ”

“ Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing, Gone the summer's harvest mowing, And again the fields are gray. Yet away, he's away! Faint and fainter hope is growing In the hearts that mourn his stay. Where the lion, crouching high on Abraham's rock with teeth of iron, Glares o'er wood and wave away, Faintly thence, as pines far sighing, Or as thunder spent and dying, Come the challenge and replying, Come the sounds of flight and fray. Well-a-day! Hope and pray! Some are living, some are lying In their red graves far away. ”

“ So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth. Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain. In the dark we cry like children ”

“ How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The river's moonlit sail! Ah! life is brief, though love be long; The altar and the bier, The burial hymn and bridal song, Were both in one short year! Her rest is quiet on the hill, Beneath the locust's bloom Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb. The Gascon lord, the village maid, In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands. What matter whose the hillside grave, Or whose the blazoned stone? ”

“ True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust. Touching and sad, a tale is told, Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch's neck to the cord, And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock's breast! ”

“ Old age sat feebly brushing away From his ears the scanty locks of gray; And careless boyhood, living the free Unconscious life of bird and tree, Suddenly wakened to a sense Of sin and its guilty consequence. It was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice; As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer ”

“ I bring my lay in tender memory of the summer day When, where our native river lapsed away, We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid On warm noonlights the masses of their shade. And she was with us, living o'er again Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,— The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. Beautiful in her holy peace as one Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, Glorified in the setting of the sun! Her memory makes our common landscape seem Fairer than any of which painters dream ”

“ On the funeral hemlock-trees Many a scalp the totem sees. "Blood for blood! But evermore Squando's heart is sad and sore; And his poor squaw waits at home For the feet that never come! "Waldron of Cocheco, hear! Squando speaks, who laughs at fear; Take the captives he has ta'en; Let the land have peace again!" As the words died on his tongue, Wide apart his warriors swung; Parted, at the sign he gave, Right and left, like Egypt's wave. And, like Israel passing free Through the prophet-charmed sea, Captive mother, wife, and child Through the dusky terror filed. ”

“ O wanderers from ancestral soil, Leave noisome mill and chaffering store: Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, And build the home once more! Come back to bayberry-scented slopes, And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine; Breathe airs blown over holt and copse Sweet with black birch and pine. What matter if the gains are small That life's essential wants supply? Your homestead's title gives you all That idle wealth can buy. All that the many-dollared crave, The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart, Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have, More dear for lack of art. ”

“ Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long, At Nature's table feast his ear and eye With joy and wonder; let all harmonies Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon The princely guest, whether in soft attire Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. ”

“ But he is greatest and best who can Worship Allah by loving man. Thus he,—to whom, in the painful stress Of zeal on fire from its own excess, Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small That man was nothing, since God was all,— Forgot, as the best at times have done, That the love of the Lord and of man are one. Little to him whose feet unshod The thorny path of the desert trod, Careless of pain, so it led to God, Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong, The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. ”

“ Which lends once more to wintry age The greenness of its spring. Oh, if these poor and blinded ones In trustful patience wait to feel O'er torpid pulse and failing limb A youthful freshness steal; Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree Whose healing leaves of life are shed, In answer to the breath of prayer, Upon the waiting head; Not to restore our failing forms, And build the spirit's broken shrine, But on the fainting soul to shed A light and life divine— Shall we grow weary in our watch, And murmur at the long delay? ”

“ She her fair young head can rest Soothed and childlike on his breast, And in trustful innocence Draw new strength and courage thence; He, the proud man, feels within But the cowardice of sin! She can murmur in her thought Simple prayers her mother taught, And His blessed angels call, Whose great love is over all; He, alone, in prayerless pride, Meets the dark Past at her side! One, who living shrank with dread From his look, or word, or tread, Unto whom her early grave Was as freedom to the slave, Moves him at this midnight hour, With the dead's unconscious power! ”

“ By day the sunlight through the leaves Falls on its moist, green sod, And wakes the violet bloom of spring And autumn's golden-rod. Its birches whisper to the wind, The swallow dips her wings In the cool spray, and on its banks The gray song-sparrow sings. But from it, when the dark night falls, The school-girl shrinks with dread; The farmer, home-bound from his fields, Goes by with quickened tread. They dare not pause to hear the grind Of shadowy stone on stone; The plashing of a water-wheel Where wheel there now is none. Has not a cry of pain been heard Above the clattering mill? ”

“ The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps green the memory of his early debt. To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, While through the hot gleam of our civil strife Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. ”

“ The Island still is purple with plums, Up the river the salmon comes, The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds On hillside berries and marish seeds,— All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man's vision returns again! And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old lie found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown! ”

“ Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes! Mission and church are now but dreams; Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan To honor God through the wrong of man. Of all his labors no trace remains Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains. The woof he wove in the righteous warp Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe, Clothes with curses the goodly land, Changes its greenness and bloom to sand; And a century's lapse reveals once more The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore. Father of Light! how blind is he Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee With the blood and tears of humanity! ”

“ How since that day Our feet have parted from the path that lay So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search Of truth, within thy Academic porch Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, Thy servitors the sciences exact; Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys, To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song, Thank God! so early to a strife so long, That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime Tread with fond feet the path of morning time. ”

“ No white-robed sisters round thee trod, Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer Rose through the damp and noisome air, Giving thee to thy God; Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave! Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be, In every heart of kindly feeling, A rite as holy paid to thee As if beneath the convent-tree Thy sisterhood were kneeling, At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping. For thou wast one in whom the light Of Heaven's own love was kindled well ”

“ The pale arc of the Northern lights Rose o'er the mountain summits, Until, at last, beneath its bridge, We heard the Bearcamp flowing, And saw across the mapled lawn The welcome home lights glowing. And, musing on the tale I heard, 'T were well, thought I, if often To rugged farm-life came the gift To harmonize and soften; If more and more we found the troth Of fact and fancy plighted, And culture's charm and labor's strength In rural homes united,— The simple life, the homely hearth, With beauty's sphere surrounding, And blessing toil where toil abounds With graces more abounding. ”

“ Wherever through the ages rise The altars of self-sacrifice, Where love its arms has opened wide, Or man for man has calmly died, I see the same white wings outspread That hovered o'er the Master's head! Up from undated time they come, The martyr souls of heathendom, And to His cross and passion bring Their fellowship of suffering. I trace His presence in the blind Pathetic gropings of my kind,— In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, In cradle-hymns of life they sung, Each, in its measure, but a part Of the unmeasured Over-Heart ”

“ Not in vain, Confessor old, Unto us the tale is told Of thy day of trial; Every age on him who strays From its broad and beaten ways Pours its seven-fold vial. Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow. Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, Must the moral pioneer From the Future borrow ”

“ As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I." Thus the Indian legend saith How, at first, the robin came With a sweeter life from death, Bird for boy, and still the same. If my young friends doubt that this Is the robin's genesis, Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith Unto gentleness belong Gifts unknown to pride and wrong; Happier far than hate is praise,— He who sings than he who slays. ”

“ Gregory fell With his twelve guests in mute accord Prone on their faces, knowing well Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord. The old-time legend is not vain; Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, Telling it o'er and o'er again On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall. Still wheresoever pity shares Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin, And love the beggar's feast prepares, The uninvited Guest comes in. Unheard, because our ears are dull, Unseen, because our eyes are dim, He walks our earth, The Wonderful, And all good deeds are done to Him. ”