John Greenleaf Whittier
The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.Collection: Past
With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream. Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow and the sin, The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our own akin; And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our mothers sung, Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always young.Collection: Mother
Let the thick curtain fall;I better know than allHow little I have gained,How vast the unattained.Collection: Fall
From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's Child, Who in the language of their farm field spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk.Collection: Children
This is truth the poet sings . . .Collection: Truth
What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored.Collection: Important
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!Collection: Love
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.Collection: Prayer
If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it.Collection: Women
And sweet and far as from a star, replied a voice which shall not cease, till drowning all the noise of war, it sings the blessed song of peaceCollection: Song
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.Collection: Prayer
Through the dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking!Collection: Dark
The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.Collection: Wine
We live by faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.Collection: Life
God's providence is not blind, but full of eyes.Collection: Eye
I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.Collection: Love
The slave will be free. Democracy in America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the top-stone of that temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping Liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will he be who can say, with John Milton, "Among those who have something more than wished her welfare, I, too, have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs."Collection: Father
God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed.Collection: Needs
Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The Rock beneath.Collection: Faith
Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants at tree, is more than all.Collection: Flower
The child must teach the man.Collection: Wisdom
The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.Collection: Flower
For still the new transcends the old In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves!Collection: Men
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.Collection: Life
With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!Collection: Angel
He is wisest, who only gives, True to himself, the best he can: Who drifting on the winds of praise, The inward monitor obeys. And with the boldness that confuses fear Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.Collection: Fear
Falsehoods which we spurn today, were the truths of long ago.Collection: Long Ago
God is good and God is light In this faith I rest secure, Evil can but serve the right, Over all shall love endure.Collection: Love
Simple duty hath no place for fear.Collection: Simple
And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!Collection: Conquer
I dimly guess, from blessings known, of greater out of sight.Collection: Blessing
Beneath the winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers.Collection: Summer
Romance is always young.Collection: Romance
We faintly hear, we dimly see, In differing phrase we pray; But dim or clear, we own in Him The life, the truth, the way.Collection: Life
Small leisure have the poor for grief.Collection: Grief
And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.Collection: Hands
What does the good ship bear so well? The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell.Collection: Cells
When earth as if on evil dreams Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disc of Mars, His fame, who led the stormy van Of battle, well may cease; But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was peace.Collection: Dream
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon.Collection: Sweet
Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world called beautiful. Through its silver veil the evil and ungentle passions looked out, hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude, at first glance, pronounce homely, unattractive and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill. Not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories, and are beautiful through their associations.Collection: Beautiful
The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed; and, close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast.Collection: Revenge
Despair is infidelity and death.Collection: Infidelity