Poems by John Greenleaf Whittier

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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To Avis Keene

ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.

Thanks for thy gift

Of ocean flowers,

Born where the golden drift

Of the slant sunshine falls

Down the green, tremulous walls

Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers,

Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers,

John Greenleaf Whittier

Godspeed

Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one

Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be

Your favoring trad-wind and consenting sea.

By sail or steed was never love outrun,

And, here or there, love follows her in whom

All graces and sweet charities unite,

The old Greek beauty set in holier light;

And her for whom New England's byways bloom,

John Greenleaf Whittier

A Christmas Carmen

Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,

The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;

Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,

Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!

With glad jubilations

Bring hope to the nations!

The dark night is ending and dawn has begun:

John Greenleaf Whittier

A Day

Talk not of sad November, when a day

Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,

And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,

Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines

Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,

Singing a pleasant song of summer still,

A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Eternal Goodness

O Friends! with whom my feet have trod

The quiet aisles of prayer,

Glad witness to your zeal for God

And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument;

Your logic linked and strong

I weigh as one who dreads dissent,

And fears a doubt as wrong.

John Greenleaf Whittier

A Word for the Hour

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse

Light after light goes out. One evil star,

Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,

As in the dream of the Apocalypse,

Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep

Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep

Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap

On one hand into fratricidal fight,

John Greenleaf Whittier

In School-Days

Still sits the school-house by the road,

A ragged beggar sleeping;

Around it still the sumachs grow,

And blackberry-vines are creeping.

Within, the master's desk is seen,

Deep scarred by raps official;

The warping floor, the battered seats,

The jack-knife's carved initial;

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Quaker Of The Olden Time

THE Quaker of the olden time!

How calm and firm and true,

Unspotted by its wrong and crime,

He walked the dark earth through.

The lust of power, the love of gain,

The thousand lures of sin

Around him, had no power to stain

The purity within.

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Worship of Nature

The harp at Nature's advent strung

Has never ceased to play;

The song the stars of morning sung

Has never died away.

And prayer is made, and praise is given,

By all things near and far;

The ocean looketh up to heaven,

And mirrors every star.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Burning Drift-Wood

Before my drift-wood fire I sit,

And see, with every waif I burn,

Old dreams and fancies coloring it,

And folly's unlaid ghosts return.

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft

The enchanted sea on which they sailed,

Are these poor fragments only left

Of vain desires and hopes that failed?

John Greenleaf Whittier

'Ein' Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott' - Luther's Hymn

We wait beneath the furnace-blast

The pangs of transformation;

Not painlessly doth God recast

And mould anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire

Where wrongs expire;

Nor spares the hand

That from the land

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Yankee Girl

She sings by her wheel at that low cottage door,

Which the long evening shadow is stretching before;

With a music as sweet as the music which seems

Breathed softly and faintly in the ear of our dreams!

How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,

Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!

And lightly and freely her dark tresses play

O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!

John Greenleaf Whittier