John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) was an American Quaker poet and abolitionist. His humanitarianism and great popular appeal established him as an important 19th-century figure.
Born on a farm near Haverhill, Massachusetts, Whittier was mostly self-educated. In 1829, he became a journalist and published Legends of New-England in Prose and Verse (1831,) a collection of poems and stories. He edited various journals 1829–46, including the abolitionist Pennsylvania Freeman.
In 1840, Whittier settled at Amesbury, Massachusetts, and devoted himself to the cause of emancipation. Called the “poet-seer of the Anti-Slavery Movement,” he wrote many anti-slavery poems and pamphlets and suffered from mob-violence and political hate.
Whittier’s zealous Christianity was manifest in many of his famous poems, including “The Yankee Girl,” “The Slavery-Ships,” “The Hunters of Men,” “Massachusetts to Virginia,” and “Ichabod.” Verses such as “Dear Lord and Father of mankind,” “Immortal love, for ever full,” and “O Brother Man” have also become well known as hymns. His poems on the subject of slavery were collected as Voices of Freedom (1846.)
Whittier’s later works include the collection In War Time (1864,) which contains the well-known ballad ‘Barbara Frietchie,’ and At Sundown (1892.)
After 1850, Whittier also wrote folksy New England ballads and narrative poems on rural themes. Among the most popular are “Skipper Ireson’s Ride,” “John Underhill,” “Maud Muller,” “Telling the Bees,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Snow-Bound” (his most well-known,) “The Eternal Goodness,” and “My Psalm.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Greenleaf Whittier
Oh, brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of God is there.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: God, Divinity, Faith
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?$Who talks of scheme and plan?$The Lord is God! He needeth not$The poor device of man.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith, Divinity, God
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, of marvels with our own competing, the strangest is the Haschish plant, and what will follow on its eating.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Drugs
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The vain regret that steals above the wreck of squandered hours.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Repentance
Forever from the hand that takes one blessing from us, others fall; and soon or late, our Father makes his perfect recompense to all.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Tradition
When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith, Man
Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Peace
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, that all of thee we loved and cherished has with thy summer roses perished; and left, as its young beauty fled, an ashen memory in its stead.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Grieving, Bereavement, Grief
Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
—John Greenleaf Whittier
But beauty seen is never lost,
God
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature’s hand, and none from that of Art.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Death
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Prayer, Work
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroism, Heroes
The tints of autumn—a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
Through the dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God’s own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith, Belief
Beauty seen is never lost, God’s colors all are fast.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Beauty
Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Character
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of earth’s gray morning is The blessing of its noon.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Resilience
O Time and change!—with hair as gray as was my sire’s that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Aging, Age
Who never climbs as rarely falls.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Success
Oh, for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Reflection, Remembrance
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Sadness
The steps of faith fall on the seeming void, but find the rock beneath.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith
The craven’s fear is but selfishness, like his merriment.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Cowardice, Fear
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Goodness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
James Russell Lowell American Poet, Critic
Emily Dickinson American Poet
Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
Marge Piercy American Poet
Gertrude Stein American Writer
Theodore Roethke American Poet
Witter Bynner American Poet