John Greenleaf Whittier

“ But, when I spurred my horse aside, as the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace. ”

“ The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar. ”

“ Loving and pleasant associations will gather about you. Never mind the ugly reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart. But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy. There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into harmonious loveliness. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. ”

“ The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.
This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,—Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. ”

“ Thus gently, thus sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity; love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and manifesting our love of Him. The baptism wherewith He was baptized was that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists! ”

“ We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air, we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price, demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty ”

“ To a close observer of human nature there is nothing surprising in the fact that a class of persons, who wink at this sacrifice of Sabhath sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement, however innocent and healthful, on this day. But for myself, looking down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment, unrestrained exercise, and fresh air. ”

“ Who wants eternal sunshine or shadow? Who would fix forever the loveliest cloudwork of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting moonlight? If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire its cascade over the rocks? Were there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining through them in its still, calm purity? Who shall venture to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her forms or colors? Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise, in itself considered? ”

“ Suffice it to say, that on the revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of our self-love ”

“ But there is something in the harmony and quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men. ”

“ Under the bleak sky of November, in biting frost and sleet rain, some twenty or more grown men, graduates of our common schools, and liable, every mother's son of them, to be made deacons, squires, and general court members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl. ”

“ The image of substantial and material loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or immaterial beauty. ”

“ Yet, let not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves unspotted from the world. ”

“ The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,—soft gleams of heaven's light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,—the glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with the light of a better day,—that hope and that faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and dead, cannot be in vain. ”

“ And it may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself, by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart, without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable doubts of the source from which it is derived. ”

“ In an hour of sickness and lassitude they have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley, and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard, blue heaven, the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
But of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous. ”

“ The new world is forgotten for the moment; blue Killarney and the Liffey sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches beneath him its dark, still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine rest upon and hallow alike with Nature's blessing the ruins of the Seven Churches of Ireland's apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and the round towers of the Phoenician sun-worshippers; pleasant and mournful recollections of his home waken within him; and the rough and seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears. ”

“ Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."
Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm, the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn. The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. ”

“ The voice of that truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more even unto the perfect day."
The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of this world."
"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. ”

“ Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn,—a mighty flower-garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. ”

“ Their churches are the devices of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the wages of unrighteousness!"
The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured forth the abundance of his zeal. ”

“ All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the sailors by signals—for even her strong voice could not reach them—to throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for succor. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate instinct of life brought face to face with death. ”

“ To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate duty, looks regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. ”

“ Let not the spirit of this world, its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple, rather than the decoration of its outward walls. ”

“ The world has now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth, honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully solitary ”

“ Not without results have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's capacities. In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time. Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the unseen penetrate the din of civilization. ”