John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

Maud Muller, on a summer's day, Raked the meadows sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health.

The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.

Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of war. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge, and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prison ship.

God is and all is well.

Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.

Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

Life is ever lord of Death
And Love can never lose its own.

All hearts confess the saints elect,
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

Low stir of leaves and dip of oars
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
Were the truths of long ago.

The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.

To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the poppies of Cathay.

Who never wins can rarely lose,
Who never climbs as rarely falls.

Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.

We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place
For the last battle of the world,
The Armageddon of the race.