John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittierwas an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the Fireside Poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings as well as his book Snow-Bound...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth17 December 1807
CountryUnited States of America
sky blue green
Green calm below, blue quietness above.
stars play shining
Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play!
christmas song angel
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease; Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, Sing the glory to God and of good-will to man!
light rose melting
A faint blush melting through the light of thy transparent cheek like a rose-leaf bathed in dew.
angel silence dumb
With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!
death giving lasts
God gives quietness at last.
beautiful mother book
We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seeker of the best, We come back laden from out quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.
fashion ebb-and-flow cities
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.
fall clouds sunbeams
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all.
love islands air
I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
dark evil giving
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, Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Yet have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
life stress soul
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
life prayer children
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. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.
fate destiny law
The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed; and, close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast.