John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes
d. 1892 United States
John Greenleaf Whittier (17 December 1807 – 7 September 1892) was an American Quaker poet and abolitionist.
- United States
- 19th-century poets
- Poets
Also known as: Whittier, John Greenleaf
Random John Greenleaf Whittier quote
93 quotes
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.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.
The Fates are just: they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
To a Southern Statesman (1864)
But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.
With silence only as their benediction,
God's angels come
Where in the shadow of a great affliction,
The soul sits dumb!
The nations lift their right hands up and swear
Their oath of freedom.
The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.
To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the poppies of Cathay.
And with a secret pain,
And smiles that seem akin to tears,
We hear the wild refrain.
But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean, like John, upon His breast.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
Were the truths of long ago.
Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow
And blackberry vines are running.
We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.
Others may sing the song,
Others may right the wrong.
A Christian! going, gone!
Who bids for God's own image?—for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?
Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place
For the last battle of the world,
The Armageddon of the race.
Each crisis brings its word and deed.