Poems: By John G. Whittier, Illus. by H. Billing

Front Cover
Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855 - American poetry - 396 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 170 - Our fathers to their graves have gone; Their strife is past, their triumph won; But sterner trials wait the race Which rises in their honored place; A moral warfare with the crime And folly of an evil time. 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.
Page 316 - O'er the rabble's laughter ; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow ; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow. Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, Must the moral pioneer From the Future borrow; Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, And, on midnight's sky of rain, Paint the golden morrow 1
Page 262 - s rest in his still countenance ! He mocks no grief with idle cheer, Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear ; But ills and woes he may not cure He kindly trains us to endure. Angel of Patience ! sent to calm Our feverish brows with cooling...
Page iii - 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.
Page 163 - 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 the hot and misty air, — Gone, gone, — sold anii gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters, — Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Page 133 - OUR fellow-countrymen in chains! Slaves — in a land of light and law! Slaves — crouching on the very plains Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war! A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood — A wail where Camden's martyrs fell — By every shrine of patriot blood, From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!
Page 145 - JUST God ! — and these are they Who minister at Thine altar, God of Right ! Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay On Israel's Ark of light ! "WTiat ! preach and kidnap men ? Give thanks — and rob Thy own afflicted poor ? Talk of Thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt hard the captive's door...
Page 139 - I love thee with a brother's love, I feel my pulses thrill, To mark thy spirit soar above The cloud of human ill. My heart hath leaped to answer thine, And echo back thy words, As leaps the warrior's at the shine And flash of kindred swords...
Page 150 - Is this the land our fathers loved, The freedom which they toiled to win ? Is this the soil whereon they moved ? Are these the graves they slumber in ? Are we the sons by whom are borne The mantles which the dead have worn ? And shall we crouch above these graves, With craven soul and fettered lip...
Page 247 - He comes — he comes — the Frost Spirit comes ! — from the frozen Labrador — From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er — "Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow!

Bibliographic information