John Greenleaf Whittier

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

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

Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.

— 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

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

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

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

When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

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

One brave deed makes no hero.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

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

How dwarfed against his manliness she sees the poor pretension, the wants, the aims, the follies, born of fashion and convention!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

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

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Clothe with life the weak intent, let me be the thing I meant.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

We give thy natal day to hope, O Country of our love and prayer! Thy way is down no fatal slope, But up to freer sun and air. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A refuge for the wronged and poor, Thy generous heart has borne the blame That, with them, through thy open door, The old world's evil outcasts came.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from 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 lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

— John Greenleaf Whittier

In calm and cool and silence, once again I find my old accustomed place among My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung, Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung, Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

The end has come, as come it must To all things; in these sweet June days The teacher and the scholar trust Their parting feet to separate ways.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Talk not of sad November, when a day Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers, And gone the Summer's pomp and show, And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, Is waiting for the Winter's snow.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that firelight dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

For the hands that cannot clasp thee, For the voices that are dumb, For each and all I bid thee A grateful welcome home!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

I,--the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray,--Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;--Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown, And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown. But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad, And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.

— John Greenleaf Whittier