John Greenleaf Whittier quotes:

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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.
All the windows of my heart I open to the day.
For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.
Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.
Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers.
A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year. These make a merry christmas!
From the death of the old the new proceeds, and the life of truth from the death of creeds.
The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
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.
Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk the hoar plum of the golden-rod.
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!
The smile of God is victory.
Life's sunniest hours are not without The shadow of some lingering doubt-- Amid its brightest joys will steal Spectres of evil yet to feel-- Its warmest love is blent with fears, Its confidence a trembling one-- Its smile--the harbinger of tears-- Its hope--the change of April's sun! A weary lot--in mercy given, To fit the chastened soul for heaven.
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be, The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea.
Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter.
And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain!
Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.
Peace hath higher tests of manhood, than battle ever knew.
With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!
A charmed life old goodness hath; the tares may perish, but the grain is not for death.
What does the good ship bear so well? The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell.
What airs outblown from ferny dells And clover-bloom and sweet brier smells.
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon.
O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still.
Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold: Once more with harvest song and shout Is nature's boldest triumph told.
Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
But dream not helm and harness The sign of valor true; Peace hath higher tests of manhood Than battle ever knew.
One brave deed makes no hero.
And I will trust that He who heeds The life that hides in mead and wold, Who hangs you alder's crimson beads, And stains these mosses green and gold, Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine.
Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn
The Fates are just: they give us but our own; Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
We meet today To thank Thee for the era done, And Thee for the opening one.
And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.
The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.
The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing.
Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care.
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie?
God gives quietness at last.
No longer forward nor behindI look in hope or fear;But, grateful, take the good I find,The best of now and here.
Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn -- a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.
Green calm below, blue quietness above.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all.
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!
Beneath the winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers.
The low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings.
No longer forward or behind I look in hope or fear, But grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here.
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!
The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat. drink, and sleep down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant
Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run.
From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's Child, Who in the language of their farm field spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk.
I'll lift you and you lift me, and we'll both ascend together.
As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.
Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.
All day the darkness and the cold Upon my heart have lain Like shadows on the winter sky Like frost upon the pane
Who never wins can rarely lose, Who never climbs as rarely falls
Thee lift me, and I lift thee, and together we ascend.
God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed.
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.
Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant ...
the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you
Every chain that spirits wear crumbles in the breadth of prayer.
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
The hope of all who suffer, The dread of all who wrong.
Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone, How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glassy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!
Sweeter than any sungMy songs that found no tongue;Nobler than any factMy 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.
Simple duty hath no place for fear.
They who wander widest lift No more of beauties' jealous veils, Than they who from their doorways see The miracle of flowers and trees.
The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair, In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.
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.
Press bravely onward! - not in vainYour generous trust in human kind;The good which bloodshed could not gainYour peaceful zeal shall find.
Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.
Beauty is its own excuse.
Let the thick curtain fall;I better know than allHow little I have gained,How vast the unattained.
The Beauty which old Greece or RomeSung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.
So let it be in God's own might We gird us for the coming fight, And, strong in Him whose cause is ours In conflict with unholy powers, We grasp the weapons he has given,-- The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.
In kindly showers and sunshine bud The branches of the dull gray wood; Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks The blue eye of the violet looks.
Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in.
Freedom's soil hath only place For a free and fearless race!
What miracle of weird transforming Is this wild work of frost and light, This glimpse of glory infinite?
Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing, under the sky's gray arch. Smiling, I watch the shaken elm boughs, knowing It is the wind of March.
God blesses still the generous thought,And still the fitting word He speeds,And Truth, at His requiring taught,He quickens into deeds.
Thanks to Allah, who gives the palm!
When earth as if on evil dreams Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disc of Mars, His fame, who led the stormy van Of battle, well may cease; But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was peace.
Man is more than constitutions.
Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.
What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease, Or heaping up dust from year to year? "Nay, none of these!" Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight, Whose eye looks still And steadily on thee through the night; "To do His will!
Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good.
Truth is one; And, in all lands beneath the sun, Whoso hath eyes to see may see The tokens of its unity.
Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will.
Children have neither past nor future - they rejoice in the present.
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Rest if you must, but never quit.
It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth.
Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world called beautiful. Through its silver veil the evil and ungentle passions looked out, hideous and hateful.
The good is always beautiful, the beautiful is good!
Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real love-liness.
Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man.
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!
Around the mighty master came The marvels which his pencil wrought, Those miracles of power whose fame Is wide as human thought.
Despair is infidelity and death.
A true life is at once interpreter and proof of the gospel.
Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world called beautiful. Through its silver veil the evil and ungentle passions looked out, hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude, at first glance, pronounce homely, unattractive and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill. Not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories, and are beautiful through their associations.
A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt.
Falsehoods which we spurn today, were the truths of long ago.
The hope of all earnest souls must be realized.
A felon's cell-- The fittest earthly type of hell!
But let the good old corn adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God!
Few have borne unconsciously the spell of loveliness.
With our sympathy for the wrongdoer we need the old Puritan and Quaker hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a righteous abhorrence of sin.
If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it.
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.
Oh, for boyhood's painless play, sleep that wakes in laughing day, health that mocks the doctor's rules, knowledge never learned of schools.

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