John Greenleaf Whittier

“ The vagrant of the street,
The human dice wherewith in games of battle
The lords of earth compete,
Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping,
All swelled the long lament,
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping
His viewless monument!
For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor,
In the long heretofore,
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender,
Has England's turf closed o'er.
And if there fell from out her grand old steeples
No crash of brazen wail,
The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples
Swept in on every gale. ”

“ The fitting symbols of a life of duty
Transfigured into love!
1859.
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay.
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!"
John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh. ”

“ And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod
An everlasting road?
Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,
Thy scorn of selfish ease;
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
Thy strong uplift of soul.
Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
To nature and to art
In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
Thy Philothea's time. ”

“ To share the noisy recompense
That mocked the shorn and blinded slave?
The heart has needs beyond the head,
And, starving in the plenitude
Of strange gifts, craves its common food,—
Our human nature's daily bread. ”

“ The traffickers in men, and put to shame,
All earth and heaven before,
The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.
All the dread Scripture lives for thee again,
To smite like lightning on the hands profane
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain. ”

“ And childhood's heart of play.
"True as the knights of story,
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As they in tilt of spears.
"As waves in stillest waters,
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.
"Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave,—
"Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own. ”

“ THE HERO. The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered his aid in the Greek struggle for independence.
"Oh for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!
"Oh for the white plume floating
Sad Zutphen's field above,—
The lion heart in battle,
The woman's heart in love!
"Oh that man once more were manly,
Woman's pride, and not her scorn:
That once more the pale young mother
Dared to boast `a man is born'! ”

“ To the log-cabin of the slave,
Made all his want and sorrow known,
And all earth's languages his own.
1866.
GEORGE L. STEARNS No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major
Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and
the free settlers of Kansas.
He has done the work of a true man,—
Crown him, honor him, love him. ”

“ When Earth, as if on evil dreams,
Looks back upon her wars,
And the white light of Christ outstreams
From the red disk of Mars,
His fame who led the stormy van
Of battle well may cease,
But never that which crowns the man
Whose victory was Peace. ”

“ Stood the Suliote but to die.
"Woe for the weak and halting!
The crescent blazed behind
A curving line of sabres,
Like fire before the wind!
"Last to fly, and first to rally,
Rode he of whom I speak,
When, groaning in his bridle-path,
Sank down a wounded Greek.
"With the rich Albanian costume
Wet with many a ghastly stain,
Gazing on earth and sky as one
Who might not gaze again. ”

“ The harvest-gathering of the heart.
1870.
THE SINGER. This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister
Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and
richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind
them only friends and admirers.
Years since (but names to me before) ,
Two sisters sought at eve my door;
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.
How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun! ”

“ (For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,
And through her pictures human fate divines) ,
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink
In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall
In the white light of heaven, the type of one
Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed; ”

“ BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated
by a festival to which these verses were sent.
We praise not now the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong. ”

“ Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary! ”

“ Who never wins can rarely lose,
Who never climbs as rarely falls. ”

“ WILLIAM FORSTER. William Forster, of Norwich, England, died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 1854, while engaged in presenting to the governors of the States of this Union the address of his religious society on the evils of slavery. He was the relative and coadjutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys; and his whole life, extending al-most to threescore and ten years, was a pore and beautiful example of Christian benevolence. He had travelled over Europe, and visited most of its sovereigns, to plead against the slave-trade and slavery ”

“ We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place
For the last battle of the world,
The Armageddon of the race. ”

“ Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age
Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings,
One royal brotherhood, one church made free
By love, which is the law of liberty
1869.
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD, ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD." Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to the extinction of slavery. ”

“ Keep the human heart of thee;
Let the mortal only be
Clothed in immortality.
And when fall our feet as fell
Thine upon the asphodel,
Let thy old smile greet us well;
Proving in a world of bliss
What we fondly dream in this,—
Love is one with holiness!
1881.
WILSON Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seventieth anniversary the
birthday of Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882.
The lowliest born of all the land,
He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand
The gifts which happier boyhood claims ”

“ "But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew. ”

“ Again the blackbirds sing; the streams
Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams,
And tremble in the April showers
The tassels of the maple flowers. ”

“ Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good ”

“ In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay.
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!
1859.
NAPLES INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON. Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies buried in the Protestant cemetery there. ”

“ JAMES T. FIELDS WILSON THE POET AND THE CHILDREN A WELCOME TO LOWELL AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL MULFORD TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER SAMUEL J. TILDEN THE CROSS. Richard Dillingham, a young member of the Society of Friends, died in the Nashville penitentiary, where he was confined for the act of aiding the escape of fugitive slaves. ”