1. John Greenleaf Whittier
Proem

    i love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
    The songs of Spenser’s golden days,
    Arcadian Sidney’s silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

    Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
The Farewell

    gone, gone,—sold and gone,
    To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
Ichabod

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
    Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
    Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath
    A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
    Befit his fall!

...
Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
Astraea

              “jove means to settle
Astræa in her seat again,
And let down from his golden chain
      An age of better metal.”—BEN JONSON, 1615.
Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
The Barefoot Boy

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
Maud Muller

Maud muller on a summer’s day
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
Skipper Ireson's Ride

Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme,—
On Apuleius’s Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar’s horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam’s prophet on Al-Borák,—
The strangest ride that ever was sped
...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
The Swan Song of Parson Avery

When the reaper’s task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop “Watch and Wait.”

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,
With the...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
The Vanishers

Sweetest of all childlike dreams
  In the simple Indian lore
Still to me the legend seems
  Of the shapes who flit before.

Flitting, passing, seen and gone,
  Never reached nor found at rest,
Baffling search, but beckoning on
  To the...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier
The Eternal Goodness

O friends! with whom my feet have trod
  The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
  And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument;
  Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
  And fears...

Poet: John Greenleaf Whittier