The noblest work by woman done

Former Massachusetts governor and member of the House of Representatives William Claflin invited people to a garden party at his home in Newtonville, Massachusetts to celebrate the 70th birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe. For that special occasion, held June 14, 1882 (actually her 71st), fellow anti-slavery writer John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem, "A Greeting":

Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
With strength beyond the strength of men,
And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave;
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own, —
North, South, and East and West, made all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
Blazed down, and every chain was riven!

Like Stowe, Whittier had also used his pen in the war against slavery, composing several poems for the cause and also editing an abolitionist newspaper. Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had become the highest selling novel of the generation and was cited as a major factor in unifying northerners against slavery. But Whittier's poem also praises her other works; he mentioned several of her "fireside stories, grave or gay," including Oldtown Folks. He continues:

To her at threescore years and ten
Be tributes of the tongue and pen;
Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!

Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs
The air to-day, our love is hers!
She needs no guaranty of fame
Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.
Long ages after ours shall keep
Her memory living while we sleep;
The waves that wash our gray coast lines,
The winds that rock the Southern pines,
Shall sing of her; the unending years
Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
And when, with sins and follies past,
Are numbered color-hate and caste,
White, black, and red shall own as one
The noblest work by woman done.

And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed

Abraham Lincoln, in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. In it, he ordered that all persons held enslaved would "henceforward... be free." Emancipation took effect on January 1, 1863. John Greenleaf Whittier, in his capacity as poet and editor, had spent the majority of his career up to that point fighting against slavery. He celebrated the victory in his poem "The Proclamation," dated January 1, 1863:

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds
Of Ballymena, wakened with these words:
            "Arise and flee
Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

According to legend, St. Patrick had once been enslaved by Milcho in Ballymena, Ireland. It was during this period that Patrick turned to prayer and believed his enslavement was punishment for his disbelief. His prayer reassured him that he would be a prophet and, years later, he returned to convert Milcho (who remained an unbeliever). Whittier, then, asks enslaved African Americans to wake up, be free, and become prophets in their own right. The poem continues:

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven
The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
            And, wondering, sees,
His prison opening to their golden keys.

He rose a man who laid him down a slave,
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
            And outward trod
Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,
            Though back and limb
Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"

So he went forth; but in God’s time he came
To light on Uilline’s hills a holy flame;
            And, dying, gave
The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,
            And freedom's song
Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint
Of ages; but, like Ballymena’s saint,
            The oppressor spare,
Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

Go forth, like him! like him return again,
To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
            Ye toiled at first,
And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.

The same day, Ralph Waldo Emerson issued his own poetic song "The Boston Hymn" at a public ceremony in Boston.

Whittier: Woe to the priesthood!

People in Charleston, South Carolina staged a pro-slavery gathering on September 4, 1835.  The turnout was strong, and the local newspapers particularly reported that the local clergymen and religious leaders came out in full force to support the cause in question. Anti-slavery poet John Greenleaf Whittier was appalled and responded with a poem, "Clerical Oppressors":

     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!

     What! 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?

     What! servants of thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
     The tasked and plundered slave!

Whittier saw not only hypocrisy from those who should be morally sound, but also the frightening correlation between them and leaders from the Bible like Pontius Pilate and Herod who were equally in the wrong. If his words weren't already strong enough, Whittier also calls them "paid hypocrites," "locusts," and people who "barter truth" for "robbery and wrong." The poem continues:

     Woe, then, to all who grind
Their brethren of a common Father down!
To all who plunder from the immortal mind
     Its bright and glorious crown!

     Woe to the priesthood! woe
To those whose hire is with the price of blood;
Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,
     The searching truths of God!

     Their glory and their might
Shall perish; and their very names shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
     Of a world's liberty.

     Oh, speed the moment on
When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love
And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known
     As in their home above.

The joy of him who toils with God

John Greenleaf Whittier was born on a farm in Haverhill, Massachusetts and, for much of his early life, he truly did live the life of a farmer. Later a famous poet, he was invited to present an original poem for the first annual Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition in his adopted town of Amesbury along with neighboring Salisbury. His poem, "A Song of Harvest," is dated September 28, 1858, and celebrates the concept of farming as part of an advanced (and pious) society:

This day, two hundred years ago,
   The wild grape by the river's side,
And tasteless groundnut trailing low,
   The table of the woods supplied.

Unknown the apple's red and gold,
   The blushing tint of peach and pear;
The mirror of the Powow told
   No tale of orchards ripe and rare.

Wild as the fruits he scorned to till,
   These vales the idle Indian trod;
Nor knew the glad, creative skill,
   The joy of him who toils with God.

O Painter of the fruits and flowers!
   We thank Thee for thy wise design
Whereby these human hands of ours
   In Nature's garden work with Thine.

And thanks that from our daily need
   The joy of simple faith is born;
That he who smites the summer weed,
   May trust Thee for the autumn corn.

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.

For he who blesses most is blest;
   And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
   An added beauty to the earth.

And, soon or late, to all that sow,
   The time of harvest shall be given;
The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
   If not on earth, at last in heaven.

At the gathering, Whittier's poem was sung as a hymn; he was paid in fruit and flowers. Whittier wrote to the president of the Agricultural and Horticultural Association for "a choice selection from the products of their gardens and orchards." He considered his own involvement only a "slight service" but promised, "I shall think all the better of my poor and homely rhymes since they have come back to me transmuted into rich fruits and beautiful flowers."

Whittier: Oh, for the death the righteous die!

Thomas Shipley was from Philadelphia and advocated for the emancipation of enslaved people very early in American history. When he died on September 17, 1836, it was said that thousands of "colored people" attended his funeral. Around this time, poet John Greenleaf Whittier had taken up the same cause of immediate emancipation, eventually moving from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. Both Whittier and Shipley were founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Inspired, Whittier wrote a poem, "To the Memory of Thomas Shipley":

...Gentlest of spirits! not for thee
Our tears are shed, our sighs are given;
Why mourn to know thou art a free
Partaker of the joys of heaven?

Instead, Whittier says, "Woe for us!": Those who "linger still" and have "feebler strength" and "minds less steadfast to the will." The poem then shifts to Shipley's goal of ending slavery and how other should take up the cause:

And at the bondman's tale of woe,
And for the outcast and forsaken,
Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,
Our weaker sympathies awaken.

Darkly upon our struggling way
The storm of human hate is sweeping;
Hunted and branded, and a prey,
Our watch amidst the darkness keeping,
Oh, for that hidden strength which can
Nerve unto death the inner man!
Oh, for thy spirit, tried and true,
And constant in the hour of trial,
Prepared to suffer, or to do,
In meekness and in self-denial.

Oh, for that spirit, meek and mild,
Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining;
By man deserted and reviled,
Yet faithful to its trust remaining.
Still prompt and resolute to save
From scourge and chain the hunted slave;
Unwavering in the Truth's defence,
Even where the fires of Hate were burning,
The unquailing eye of innocence
Alone upon the oppressor turning!

O loved of thousands! to thy grave,
Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee.
The poor man and the rescued slave
Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee;
And grateful tears, like summer rain,
Quickened its dying grass again!
And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine,
Shall come the outcast and the lowly,
Of gentle deeds and words of thine
Recalling memories sweet and holy!

Oh, for the death the righteous die!
An end, like autumn's day declining,
On human hearts, as on the sky,
With holier, tenderer beauty shining;
As to the parting soul were given
The radiance of an opening heaven!
As if that pure and blessed light,
From off the Eternal altar flowing,
Were bathing, in its upward flight,
The spirit to its worship going!

Whittier: In peace secure, in justice strong

The International Exhibition in Philadelphia was one of many events celebrating the centennial of the United States (two months later, Sidney Lanier and Bayard Taylor presented a Cantata and poem, respectively). The opening event, however, was held on May 10, 1876 and included the singing of an original hymn by New England poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Like Lanier and Taylor, Whittier emphasized the unity of the country and the progress of freedom in the decade after the Civil War. His "Centennial Hymn":

Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.

Here, where of old, by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.

Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.

Thou, who hast here in concord furled
The war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.

For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!

Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law:
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old!

Whittier: To keep our faith and patience

John Greenleaf Whittier based his early career almost entirely on his anti-slavery views, writing abolitionist poetry and articles for The Liberator and elsewhere (he was also a good friend of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison). When South Carolina was the first to secede from the Union, he began to worry about the country; he worried more when Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida followed suit. In response, on January 16, 1861, he wrote "A Word for the Hour":

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
On one hand into fratricidal fight,
Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
Frame lies of laws, and good and ill confound?
What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage ground
Our feet are planted; let us there remain
In un-revengeful calm, no means untried
Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
The sad spectators of a suicide!
They break the lines of Union: shall we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Draw we not even now a freer breath,
As from our shoulders falls a load of death
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore
When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
Why take we up the accursed thing again?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag
With its vile reptile blazon. Let us press
The golden cluster on our brave old flag
In closer union, and, if numbering less,
Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.

John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th century, his 70th birthday party in 1877 was a major event — in more ways than one.

The party was thrown by the Atlantic Monthly at Boston's Brunswick Hotel. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Richard Henry Stoddard, and about fifty others. Speeches were presented in Whittier's honor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem. Perhaps out of place among these New England literary giants was Mark Twain — who ended up stealing the show.

Twain, invited by his friend and Atlantic editor William Dean Howells, presented a speech intended to be humorous. He described a man he met while traveling who had recently hosted Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow. According to Twain, the man referred to Emerson as "a seedy little bit of a chap," while Holmes was "as fat as a balloon... and had double chins all the way down to his stomach," while Longfellow had "cropped and bristly" hair "as if he had a wig made of hair brushes." The three men start quoting obscure passages of poetry to the man, who clearly does not understand.

The man tells Twain that he now plans to move, saying, "I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." Twain responds by telling him they must not have been the true "gracious singers" but imposters. When the newspapers reported the speech as an "attack," Twain sent letters of apology to Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow and Whittier. Longfellow responded that the newspapers were responsible for the "mischief" and that everyone else recognized the "bit of humor." Longfellow concluded: "It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much." No response from Whittier regarding Twain's speech is known.

Child: We are not dead; we are the living

After an accomplished career as a writer and a proponent of reform movements (including abolitionism), Lydia Maria Child died at the age of 78. Two days later, on October 23, 1880, her funeral was held before her burial at North Cemetery in Wayland, Massachusetts. There were very few in attendance — friends, neighbors, nieces, the few remaining fellow abolitionists, and "poor people who had been recipients of her charity."

Child's majors works included a domestic manual for those with only a modest income and her Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833). The book, printed still early in the active anti-slavery movement, was controversial; the Boston Athenaeum even revoked Child's free library privileges. It argued that slavery was destructive to everyone, including slave owners, and urged northerners to take action. It was read by people like William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Wendell Phillips. Phillips in particular credited Child's book as a main source of inspiration for his own anti-slavery efforts.

In fact, it was Phillips that presented the eulogy at Child's funeral in 1880. "Mrs. Child's character was one of rare elements," he said, "and their combination in one person rarer still." Phillips said that she always followed one divine rule: "Bear ye one another's burdens." He also noted that she never slowed down, even inher old age. She had "still the freshness of girlhood... [with] ready wit, quick retort, mirthful just." He also claimed that, in their last meeting, Child thought "spirit hands" had given her the words which should inscribe her epitaph: "You think us dead. We are not dead; we are the living." Those words were, in fact, inscribed on her gravestone.

Child's good friend John Greenleaf Whittier was particularly saddened by her death. To her, he dedicated his poem "Within the Gate." The poem concludes:

And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
      Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:
      Thou hast not lived to die!

Blackened and bleeding in Chicago

The Great Chicago Fire burned for three days beginning on October 8, 1871. As with many other national tragedies, several poets were inspired to memorialize the event and its unfortunate victims lyrically. Bret Harte, for example, wrote "Chicago" a description of the horrific devastation left behind: "Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone / On the charred fragments of her shattered throne."

On the other hand, John Greenleaf Whittier noted how Americans were unified in the need to stay hopeful in his own poem, also named "Chicago":

From East, from West, from South and North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed reached to save.

John Boyle O'Reilly personified Chicago as a woman "who was once so fair," but now "charred and rent are her garments." Like Whittier, O'Reilly notes that she is "rich in her treasures" because she has friends who will assist her. The country, after all, is striving for Chicago's rebirth:

Silent she stands on the prairie,
Wrapped in her fire-scathed sheet:
Around her, thank God, is the Nation,
Weeping for her desolation,
Pouring its gold at her feet...

It is estimated that as many as 400 people died in the Great Chicago Fire. The rumor persisted for years that the fire which destroyed four square miles was started by the family cow owned by the O'Leary family.

Whittier, Child, Sumner, Beecher: Abolitionists after slavery

From his home in Amesbury, Massachusetts, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote to Lydia Maria Child on September 20, 1874. "I make many new friends," he began, "but my heart, as I grow older, turns longingly to the surviving friends of my early years, who had shared in the struggles and triumphs of a great cause." Whittier was referring to the anti-slavery cause, for which both he and Child were strong advocates.

By 1874, both were getting old (Whittier, though only 66, noted in the letter, "We are all growing old and nearing the unknown shore") and the movement against slavery was won. In fact, Child had sent Whittier an image of one of abolitionism's greatest champion, Senator Charles Sumner, who had died only recently. Without their cause, however, both writers continued writing. Whittier mentioned that his "little book," Hazel-Blossoms, would be published soon and promised to send a copy to Child. The two were dear friends after all: "We have so much in common," Whittier noted. "We so nearly agree on so many points."

But all was not well in the world. Whittier referenced a growing scandal in New York involving another anti-slavery man, one who used his voice more often than his pen: Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose own anti-slavery writing allegedly caused a whole war). "I have loved Beecher so much!" Whittier wrote, never actually mentioning the details of the sex scandal in Brooklyn. "I cannot believe him guilty as is charged, and yet it looks very dark." He called it "a most mournful tragedy."

The thing for your publishing list this fall

In the mid-19th century, an up-and-coming writer could get no better endorsement than one from John Greenleaf Whittier. On behalf of a young female poet he had befriended, Whittier wrote to his publisher James T. Fields on July 8, 1853:

I enclose to thee what I regard as a very unique and beautiful little book in MS. I don't wish thee however to take my opinion; but, the first leisure hour thee have read it, and I am sure thee will decide that it is exactly the thing for your publishing list this fall.

Whittier noted that these poems were "unlike anything in our literature" and would appeal to both "young and old." It was not until the postscript that Whittier mentioned the author's name: "Lucy Larcom of Beverly [Massachusetts]."

Larcom had published a few poems here and there, especially in the Lowell Offering, a publication which catered to the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. She met Whittier in the mid-1840s; the two became good friends and Whittier often promoted her work. Later, they co-edited three books together.

James T. Fields, however, did not see her potential. He passed on the manuscript. It later was given to John P. Jewett, who published it as Similitude from Ocean and Prairie. Whittier concluded Jewett, not Fields, was "the best publisher for it."

Taylor: the greater task, for thee to live!

As part of the nation's centennial celebration on July 4, 1876, Pennsylvania poet and travel writer Bayard Taylor (pictured) was chosen to present an original poem in Philadelphia. They also asked him to find someone to write an original Cantata. He first thought of Edmund Clarence Stedman, but he was out of the country. So he wrote to Sidney Lanier: "I am sure you can do this worthily. It's a great occasion, — not especially for poetry, as an art, but for Poetry to assert herself as a power."

Lanier agreed to it, and his cantata (set to music by Dudley Buck) was performed at the opening ceremonies of the centennial celebration in May. The event was a proud representation of both North and South.

The crowd gathered in Independence Square (site of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed) to hear Taylor recite his poem, "Centennial Ode." This is the final stanza:

     Look up, look forth, and on!
     There's light in the dawning sky:
The clouds are parting, the night is gone:
     Prepare for the work of the day!
     Fallow thy pastures lie
     And far thy shepherds stray,
And the fields of thy vast domain
     Are waiting for purer seed
     Of knowledge, desire, and deed,
For keener sunshine and mellower rain!
     But keep thy garments pure:
Pluck them back, with the old disdain,
     From touch of the hands that stain !
     So shall thy strength endure.
Transmute into good the gold of Gain,
Compel to beauty thy ruder powers,
     Till the bounty of coming hours
     Shall plant, on thy fields apart,
With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art!
     Be watchful, and keep us so:
     Be strong, and fear no foe:
     Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love, love us, as we give;
     And the day shall never come,
     That finds us weak or dumb
     To join and smite and cry
In the great task, for thee to die,
And the greater task, for thee to live!

After Taylor's death two years later, John Greenleaf Whittier (who wrote a hymn for the same centennial celebration) assessed the writer's career: "It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature... His Centennial ode [and others]... are sureties of the permanence of his reputation."

Whittier's first published poem

A poem titled "The Exile's Departure" saw print in the June 8, 1826 issue of the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Free Press. The editor of the magazine was William Lloyd Garrison, still early in his career. He was intrigued by the anonymous poet and published several more of his poems. "His poetry bears the stamp of true genius," he wrote in the Free Press, "which, if carefully cultivated, will rank him among the bards of his country."

Finally, Garrison rode out to the family farm in Haverhill, eager to meet the anonymous poet. That was the first day that Garrison met John Greenleaf Whittier face to face. Whittier didn't know he was coming and Garrison was surprised to meet a younger man than he expected (they were only three years apart). Garrison encouraged Whittier to further his education and continued publishing his poems with every publication he edited (including Boston's National Philanthropist and the Journal of the Times in Bennington, Vermont).

Garrison also helped Whittier get work in the periodical industry. The most notable connection between the two came in The Liberator, a publication founded by Garrison with a strong anti-slavery agenda. Whittier gladly joined the cause. The poet praised the activist in his poem "To William Lloyd Garrison," calling him the "Champion of those who groan beneath / Oppression's iron hand." Soon, however, the two had a falling out over the direction of the abolitionist movement. They did not reconcile until after the Civil War.

The following is the third stanza (of four) from "The Exile's Departure," Whittier's first published poem:

Friends of my youth! I must leave you forever,
  And hasten to dwell in a region unknown: —
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean sever,
  Hearts firmly united and tried as our own.
Ah, no! though I wander, all sad and forlorn,
  In a far distant land, yet shall memory trace,
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I'm borne,
  The scene of past pleasures, — my own native place.

To holier tasks that God has willed

The activist William Lloyd Garrison died after a sudden illness. A funeral was held on May 28, 1879 that drew an impressive crowd of admirers, including several fellow abolitionists (Wendell Philips and Lucy Stone, for example).

The poet-abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier was represented too. An original poem was written specifically for the occasion and read by one of the ministers. Whittier had earned his earliest support from Garrison, who published his first poem, helped him get formal schooling, and got him a job with an abolitionist newspaper. In the 1830s, Whittier said he loved Garrison like a brother, making Whittier's poem, titled "Garrison," quite appropriate for the occasion:

The storm and peril overpast,
     The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
    The place which thou alone canst fill.

Confirm the lesson taught of old —
    Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
    The lease of God's eternal day.

Not for thyself, but for the slave
    Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
    The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
    We heard a tenderer undersong;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
    From love of man thy hate of wrong.

Now past and present are as one;
    The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
    The immortality of love.

With somewhat of thy lofty faith
    We lay thy outworn garment by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
    And life the life that cannot die!

Not for a soul like thine the calm
    Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
But duty, more than crown or palm,
    Its own exceeding recompense.

Go up and on! thy day well done,
    Its morning promise well fulfilled,
Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
    To holier tasks that God has willed.

Go, leave behind thee all that mars
    The work below of man for man;
With the white legions of the stars
    Do service such as angels can.

Wherever wrong shall right deny,
    Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
    A hand to set the captive free!

At sunset, Garrison was laid to rest at Forest Hills Cemetery in Massachusetts.

*The bust above was sculpted by Anne Whitney, who also created a statue of fellow abolitionist Charles Sumner, now located in Harvard Square. This image of Garrison was used as the frontispiece for the published version of Garrison's services.

Your old friend, John G. Whittier

The poet John Greenleaf Whittier often encouraged the work of younger writers, particularly women. One of the women for whom Whittier served as a mentor was the Lowell, Massachusetts-based Lucy Larcom. She once invited him to visit but, being unable, he had to refuse. Rather than write a boring letter, however, he wrote her a poem. It is dated March 25, 1866, sent from his home in Amesbury, Massachusetts (don't worry if you don't get his inside jokes and other references):

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sorrow
That I cannot take my carpet-bag, and go to town to-morrow;
But I'm "Snow-bound," and cold on cold, like layers of an onion,
Have piled my back, and weighed me down, as with the pack of Bunyan.

The north-east wind is damper, and the north-west wind is colder,
Or else the matter simply is that I am growing older;
And then, I dare not trust a moon seen over one's left shoulder
As I saw this, with slender horn caught in a west hill-pine,
As on a Stamboul minaret curves the Arch Imposter's sign.

So I must stay in Amesbury, and let you go your way,
And guess what colors greet your eyes, what shapes your steps delay,
What pictured forms of heathen love, of god and goddess please you,
What idol graven images you bend your wicked knees to.

But why should I of evil dreams, well knowing at your head goes
That flower of Christian womanhood, our dear good Anna Meadows!
She'll be discreet, I'm sure, although, once, in a fit romantic,
She flung the Doge's bridal ring, and married the "Atlantic;"
And spite of all appearances, like the woman in the shoe,
She's got so many "Young Folks" now she don't know what to do.

But I must say, I think it strange that thee and Mrs. Spaulding,
Whose lives with Calvin's five-barred creed have been so tightly walled in,
Should quit your Puritanic homes, and take the pains to go
So far, with malice aforethought, to walk in a vain show!
Did Emmons hunt for pictures? was Jonathan Edwards peeping
Into the chambers of imagery with maids for Tammuz weeping?

Ah, well, the times are sadly changed, and I msyself am feeling
The wicked world my uaker coat from off my shoulders peeling;
God grant that, in the strange new sea of change wherein we swim,
We still may keep the good old plank of simple faith in Him!

P.S. My housekeeper's got the "tissuck," and gone away, and Lizzie
Is at home for the vacation, with flounce and trimmings busy;
The snow lies white about us, the birds again are dumb, —
The lying blue-frocked rascals who told us Spring had come;
But in the woods of Folly-Mill the sweet May-flowers are making
All ready for the moment of Nature's great awaking.

Come when they come; their welcome share: — except when at the city,
For months I've scarce seen womankind, save when, in sheerest pity,
Gail Hamilton came up, beside my lonely hearth to sit,
And make the Winter evening glad with wisdom and with wit
And fancy, feeling but the spur and not the curbing bit,
Lending a womanly charm to what before was bachelor rudeness; —
The Lord reward her for an act of disinterested goodness!

And now, with love to Mrs. F., and Mrs. S. (God bless her!),
And hoping that my foolish rhyme may not prove a transgressor,
And wishing for your sake and mine, it wiser were and wittier,
I leave it, and subscribe myself, your old friend,
                                      John G. Whittier.

Whittier's Winter Idyl

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

Thus begins Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll, which was published on February 17, 1866. Its author, John Greenleaf Whittier, had primarily been known as an abolitionist poet. With the Civil War over and emancipation achieved, Whittier turned to more peaceful topics. He told his publisher James T. Fields it was "a homely picture of New England homes."

Snow-Bound was based on a storm which forced the Whittier family indoors (at what is now the Whittier Homestead, open to the public). To pass the time, the family told stories by the hearth. By the time Whittier wrote the poem, he lived only six miles away from his boyhood home and birthplace. Though it had been in the family for generations, it was then owned by others.

To Whittier's surprise, the book was an instant success, eventually earning him $10,000 (unadjusted) in royalties. Biographer Francis Henry Underwood noted its appeal: "The scenes glow with ideal beauty... We have afterwards nothing but recollections of cheerful piety, modest and steadfast truth, and heart-felt love."

Ultimately, the family-based narrative in a quaint New England home recalls the simple, peaceful days before the Civil War. Whittier, a Quaker, also stands defiant to emerging modernism (both culturally and poetically).

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.

The influence of Robert Burns

The Scottish poet Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759. His centennial, 100 years after his birth, was during the period known as the American Renaissance — a period which saw massive accomplishments in the development of American culture, particularly in literature. Many of the major "heavy-hitters" in American literary history, then, were part of celebrating Burns's 100th birthday.

Poet James Russell Lowell wrote a memorial to burns specifically for the centennial in 1859. The author of the 24-stanza piece was then entering his 40th year. Lowell's poem, "At the Burns Centennial," incorporates just a little humor as it depicts the soul of Burns attempting to enter heaven ("You've let in worse, I 'se wager!"). In typical Lowell fashion, however, the poem is mostly just tedious to read.

But, perhaps no American poet owes more to Burns than John Greenleaf Whittier, the so-called Quaker Poet of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Whittier and Burns shared a rural background. The story goes that Whittier always kept a copy of Burns's poetry in his pocket while doing his chores on the family farm. To Burns, he wrote a poem called "Burns: On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom." In it, Whittier uses the sprig of heather as a metaphor for the work of Burns:

No more these simple flowers belong
  To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
  They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
  The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
  He sang of live together.

...Through all his tuneful art, how strong
  The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
  Is warm with smiles and blushes!

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
  So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
  But spare his Highland Mary!