John Greenleaf Whittier

"The belief has been constantly expressed in England that in the United States, which has produced William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, James Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier and Abraham Lincoln there must be those of their descendants who would take hold of the work of inaugurating an era of law and order. The colored people of this country who have been loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun this crusade."

"Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion of Mexico were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists. Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely supported it or opposed it...Opposition to the Mexican War came from writers who were active abolitionists such as Thoreau, Whittier, and Lowell. They believed the war was a plot of southern slave owners to extend slavery, punishing Mexico for having outlawed slavery when it became independent from Spain."

"I have in my hand a poem which our own beloved poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote almost fifty years ago, in the darkest hour of the midnight which brooded over our country. You are most of you, perhaps all, familiar with it. It is addressed to Mr. Garrison. Shall I read a single stanza? I do it to illustrate a point strongly put by our brother who has just taken his seat; that is, the power of a single soul, alone, of a single soul touched with sacred fire, a soul all of whose powers are enlisted the thought, the feeling, the susceptibility, the emotion, the indomitable will, the conscience that never shrinks, and always points to duty-I say, the power which God has lodged in the human mind, enabling to do and to dare and to suffer everything, and thank God for the privilege of doing it. To show also how, when one soul is thus stirred in its innermost and to its uttermost, it is irresistible; that wherever there are souls, here and there, and thick and fast, too, not merely one, and another, and another, of the great mass, but multitudes of souls are ready to receive the truth and welcome it, to incorporate it into their thought and feeling, to live and die for it. That was the effect of Garrison upon the soul of Whittier. He here gives us his testimony. The date of this is 1833-almost fifty years ago. He says in the third stanza: "I love thee with a brother's love,/I feel my pulses thrill/To mark thy spirit soar above/The cloud of human ill./My heart hath leaped to answer thine,/And echo back thy words,/As leaps the warrior's at the shine/And flash of kindred swords!""

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said."

"The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun."

"What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,—generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration."

"O, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of God is there."

"Press bravely onward! — not in vain Your generous trust in human kind; The good which bloodshed could not gain Your peaceful zeal shall find."

"So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore; The glory from his gray hairs gone For evermore!"

"When faith is lost, when honor dies The man is dead!"

"Making their lives a prayer."

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

"Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good."

"The hope of all who suffer, The dread of all who wrong."

"I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care."

"Again the shadow moveth o'er The dial-plate of time."

"Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight, Through present wrong the eternal right; And, step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man;"

"We lack but open eye and ear To find the Orient's marvels here; The still small voice in autumn's hush, Yon maple wood the burning bush."

"Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart."

"Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young."

"The Night is Mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling."

"Beauty seen is never lost."

"God blesses still the generous thought, And still the fitting word He speeds, And Truth, at His requiring taught, He quickens into deeds."

"Each crisis brings its word and deed."

"The Beauty which old Greece or Rome Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home."

"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."

"Nature speaks in symbols and in signs."

"Who never wins can rarely lose, Who never climbs as rarely falls."

"To eat the lotus of the Nile And drink the poppies of Cathay."

"The harp at Nature's advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away."

"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago."

"Low stir of leaves and dip of oars And lapsing waves on quiet shores."

"All hearts confess the saints elect, Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity!"

"Life is ever lord of Death And Love can never lose its own."

"Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained."

"Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue; Nobler than any fact My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,— Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win."

"God is and all is well."

"Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of war. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge, and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prison ship."

"The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed And close as sin and suffering joined We march to fate abreast."

"Maud Muller, on a summer's day, Raked the meadows sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health."

"So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune."

"He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go: And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise."

"A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been"."

"Weary lawyers with endless tongues."

"Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!""

"God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait."

"As yonder tower outstretches to the earth The dark triangle of its shade alone When the clear day is shining on its top; So, darkness in the pathway of man's life Is but the shadow of God's providence, By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon; And what is dark below is light in heaven."

"For they the mind of Christ discern Who lean, like John, upon His breast."

"Strike! Thou the Master, we Thy keys, The anthem of the destinies! The minor of Thy loftier strain, Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain — "Thy will be done!""

"Somehow not only for Christmas But all the long year through, The joy that you give to others Is the joy that comes back to you. And the more you spend in blessing The poor and lonely and sad, The more of your heart's possessing Returns to make you glad."