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.”
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Who never climbs as rarely falls.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Success
But beauty seen is never lost,
God
—John Greenleaf Whittier
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
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
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
The vain regret that steals above the wreck of squandered hours.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Repentance
To be saved is only this,—salvation from our own selfishness.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Selfishness
The tints of autumn—a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Goodness
On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll; on plastic clay and leather scroll, man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, and lo! the Press was found at last!
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Media
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
How dwarfed against his manliness she sees the poor pretension, the wants, the aims, the follies, born of fashion and convention!
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Men
When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Man, Faith
The steps of faith fall on the seeming void, but find the rock beneath.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith
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
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: Belief, Faith
Every chain that spirits wear crumbles in the breadth of prayer.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Prayer
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 you glad.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Christmas, Joy
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Sadness
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
Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Divinity, Faith, God
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: Grief, Bereavement, Grieving
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Heroism, Heroes, Heroes/Heroism
Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Tradition
All the windows of my heart I open to the day.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Carpe-diem
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave
Of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s,
Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith, Belief
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 craven’s fear is but selfishness, like his merriment.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Fear, Cowardice
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
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