Quotes by John Greenleaf Whittier - Page 4

Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease; Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, Sing the glory to God and of good-will to man!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Christmas
Smile
Angel
Blow
Song
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A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Faith
Errors
Loss
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Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Running
Destiny
Keys
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Strength
Fighting
Light
Strong
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Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Ocean
Dark
Shining
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And I will trust that He who heeds The life that hides in mead and wold, Who hangs you alder's crimson beads, And stains these mosses green and gold, Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Done
Gold
Moss
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Fear
Giving
Wind
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A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Flower
Grateful
Gratitude
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What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,-generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Admiration
Kind
Looking Good
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What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease, Or heaping up dust from year to year? "Nay, none of these!" Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight, Whose eye looks still And steadily on thee through the night; "To do His will!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Eye
Night
Sight
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We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seeker of the best, We come back laden from out quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Beautiful
Flower
Mother
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Dream
Men
War
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God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait, Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Yet have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Truth
Dark
Evil
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It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Crisis
Persuasion
Sweet
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The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat. drink, and sleep down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Men
Mean
Sleep
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Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone, How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glassy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Girl
Fall
Rap
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Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Nature
Doe
Eden
Flower
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The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair, In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Clouds
Fashion
Garden
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Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Men
Character
Christian
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Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Truth
Children
Inquiry
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Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real love-liness.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Beauty
Color
Heart
Real
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Life's sunniest hours are not without The shadow of some lingering doubt-- Amid its brightest joys will steal Spectres of evil yet to feel-- Its warmest love is blent with fears, Its confidence a trembling one-- Its smile--the harbinger of tears-- Its hope--the change of April's sun! A weary lot--in mercy given, To fit the chastened soul for heaven.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Evil
Joy
Love Is
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The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Flower
Offering
Past
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Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and 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 lips and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Girl
Eye
Mother
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So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Morning
Night
Wall
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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."
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
America
Father
Reality
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God should be most where man is least: So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag nor form of creed To clothe the nakedness of need,- Where farmer folk in silence meet,- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Men
Oneness
Pride
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Dream
Mother
Song
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Beautiful
Fashion
Memories
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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.
John Greenleaf Whittier / Poet
Life
Children
Prayer
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John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes - Page 4

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