A glimmer of heat was in the air,-The dark green woods were still;And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloudHung over the western hill.
Black, thick, and vast arose that cloudAbove the wilderness,
As some dark world from upper airWere stooping over this.
At times the solemn thunder pealed,And all was still again,Save a low murmur in the airOf coming wind and rain.
Just as the first big rain-drop fell,A weary stranger came,And stood before the farmer's door,With travel soiled and lame.
Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hopeWas in his quiet glance,And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothedHis tranquil countenance,-
A look, like that his Master woreIn Pilate's council-hall:It told of wrongs, but of a loveMeekly forgiving all.
'Friend! wilt thou give me shelter here?'The stranger meekly said;And, leaning on his oaken staff,The goodman's features read.
'My life is hunted,-evil menAre following in my track;The traces of the torturer's whipAre on my aged back;
'And much, I fear, 't will peril theeWithin thy doors to takeA hunted seeker of the Truth,Oppressed for conscience' sake.'
Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife,'Come in, old man!' quoth she,'We will not leave thee to the storm,Whoever thou mayst be.'
Then came the aged wanderer in,And silent sat him down;While all within grew dark as nightBeneath the storm-cloud's frown.
But while the sudden lightning's blazeFilled every cottage nook,And with the jarring thunder-rollThe loosened casements shook,
A heavy tramp of horses' feetCame sounding up the lane,And half a score of horse, or more,Came plunging through the rain.
'Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door,-We would not be house-breakers;A rueful deed thou'st done this day,In harboring banished Quakers.'
Out looked the cautious goodman then,With much of fear and awe,For there, with broad wig drenched with rainThe parish priest he saw.
Open thy door, thou wicked man,And let thy pastor in,And give God thanks, if forty stripesRepay thy deadly sin.'
'What seek ye?' quoth the goodman;'The stranger is my guest;He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,-Pray let the old man rest.'
'Now, out upon thee, canting knave!'And strong hands shook the door.'Believe me, Macy,' quoth the priest,'Thou 'lt rue thy conduct sore.'
Then kindled Macy's eye of fire'No priest who walks the earth,Shall pluck away the stranger-guestMade welcome to my hearth.'
Down from his cottage wall he caughtThe matchlock, hotly triedAt Preston-pans and Marston-moor,By fiery Ireton's side;
Where Puritan, and Cavalier,With shout and psalm contended;And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer,With battle-thunder blended.
Up rose the ancient stranger then'My spirit is not freeTo bring the wrath and violenceOf evil men on thee;
'And for thyself, I pray forbear,Bethink thee of thy Lord,Who healed again the smitten ear,And sheathed His follower's sword.
'I go, as to the slaughter led.Friends of the poor, farewell!'Beneath his hand the oaken doorBack on its hinges fell.
'Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay,'The reckless scoffers cried,As to a horseman's saddle-bowThe old man's arms were tied.
And of his bondage hard and longIn Boston's crowded jail,Where suffering woman's prayer was heard,With sickening childhood's wail,
It suits not with our tale to tell;Those scenes have passed away;Let the dim shadows of the pastBrood o'er that evil day.
'Ho, sheriff!' quoth the ardent priest,'Take Goodman Macy too;The sin of this day's heresyHis back or purse shall rue.'
'Now, goodwife, haste thee!' Macy cried.She caught his manly arm;Behind, the parson urged pursuit,With outcry and alarm.
Ho! speed the Macys, neck or naught,-The river-course was near;The plashing on its pebbled shoreWas music to their ear.
A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch,Above the waters hung,And at its base, with every wave,A small light wherry swung.
A leap-they gain the boat-and thereThe goodman wields his oar;'Ill luck betide them all,' he cried,'The laggards on the shore.'
Down through the crashing underwood,The burly sheriff came:-'Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself;Yield in the King's own name.'
'Now out upon thy hangman's face!'Bold Macy answered then,-'Whip women, on the village green,But meddle not with men.'
The priest came panting to the shore,His grave cocked hat was gone;Behind him, like some owl's nest, hungHis wig upon a thorn.
'Come back,-come back!' the parson cried,'The church's curse beware.''Curse, an' thou wilt,' said Macy, 'butThy blessing prithee spare.'
'Vile scoffer!' cried the baffled priest,'Thou 'lt yet the gallows see.''Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned,'Quoth Macy, merrily;
'And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by!'He bent him to his oar,And the small boat glided quietlyFrom the twain upon the shore.
Now in the west, the heavy cloudsScattered and fell asunder,While feebler came the rush of rain,And fainter growled the thunder.
And through the broken clouds, the sunLooked out serene and warm,Painting its holy symbol-lightUpon the passing storm.
Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span,O'er dim Crane-neck was bended;One bright foot touched the eastern hills,And one with ocean blended.
By green Pentucket's southern'slopeThe small boat glided fast;The watchers of the Block-house sawThe strangers as they passed.
That night a stalwart garrisonSat shaking in their shoes,To hear the dip of Indian oars,The glide of birch canoes.
The fisher-wives of Salisbury-The men were all away-Looked out to see the stranger oarUpon their waters play.
Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threwTheir sunset-shadows o'er them,And Newbury's spire and weathercockPeered o'er the pines before them.
Around the Black Rocks, on their left,The marsh lay broad and green;And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned,Plum Island's hills were seen.
With skilful hand and wary eyeThe harbor-bar was crossed;A plaything of the restless wave,The boat on ocean tossed.
The glory of the sunset heavenOn land and water lay;On the steep hills of Agawam,On cape, and bluff, and bay.
They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann,And Gloucester's harbor-bar;The watch-fire of the garrisonShone like a setting star.
How brightly broke the morningOn Massachusetts Bay!Blue wave, and bright green island,Rejoicing in the day.
On passed the bark in safetyRound isle and headland steep;No tempest broke above them,No fog-cloud veiled the deep.
Far round the bleak and stormy CapeThe venturous Macy passed,And on Nantucket's naked isleDrew up his boat at last.
And how, in log-built cabin,They braved the rough sea-weather;And there, in peace and quietness,Went down life's vale together;
How others drew around them,And how their fishing sped,Until to every wind of heavenNantucket's sails were spread;
How pale Want alternatedWith Plenty's golden smile;Behold, is it not writtenIn the annals of the isle?
And yet that isle remainethA refuge of the free,As when true-hearted MacyBeheld it from the sea.
Free as the winds that winnowHer shrubless hills of sand,Free as the waves that batterAlong her yielding land.
Than hers, at duty's summons,No loftier spirit stirs,Nor falls o'er human sufferingA readier tear then hers.
God bless the sea-beat island!And grant forevermore,That charity and freedom dwellAs now upon her shore!
About the author
About the poet
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets. Whittier was strongly influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Highly regarded in his lifetime and for a period thereafter, he is now remembered for his poem Snow-Bound, and the words of the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, from his poem The Brewing of Soma, sung to music by Hubert Parry.
Biography
Early Life and Work
John Greenleaf Whittier was born to John and Abigail (Hussey) at their rural homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1807. He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, a maternal aunt and paternal uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm. Their farm was not very profitable. There was only enough money to get by. Whittier himself was not cut out for hard farm labor and suffered from bad health and physical frailty his whole life. Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father’s six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
Whittier was first introduced to poetry by a teacher. His sister sent his first poem, "The Exile's Departure", to the Newburyport Free Press without his permission and its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, published it on June 8, 1826. As a boy, it was discovered that Whittier was color-blind when he was unable to see a difference between ripe and unripe strawberries. Garrison as well as another local editor encouraged Whittier to attend the recently-opened Haverhill Academy. To raise money to attend the school, Whittier became a shoemaker for a time, and a deal was made to pay part of his tuition with food from the family farm. Before his second term, he earned money to cover tuition by serving as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in what is now Merrimac, Massachusetts. He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms.
Garrison gave Whittier the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly. Shortly after a change in management, Garrison reassigned him as editor of the weekly American Manufacturer in Boston. Whittier became an out-spoken critic of President Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England. In 1833 he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years.
Abolitionist Activity
During the 1830s, Whittier became interested in politics, but after losing a Congressional election in 1832, he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned home at age twenty-five. The year 1833 was a turning point for Whittier; he resurrected his correspondence with Garrison, and the passionate abolitionist began to encourage the young Quaker to join his cause.
In 1833, Whittier published the antislavery pamphlet Justice and Expediency, and from there dedicated the next twenty years of his life to the abolitionist cause. The controversial pamphlet destroyed all of his political hopes—as his demand for immediate emancipation alienated both northern businessmen and southern slaveholders—but it also sealed his commitment to a cause that he deemed morally correct and socially necessary. He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and signed the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833, which he often considered the most significant action of his life.
Whittier's political skill made him useful as a lobbyist, and his willingness to badger anti-slavery congressional leaders into joining the abolitionist cause was invaluable. From 1835 to 1838, he traveled widely in the North, attending conventions, securing votes, speaking to the public, and lobbying politicians. As he did so, Whittier received his fair share of violent responses, being several times mobbed, stoned, and run out of town. From 1838 to 1840, he was editor of The Pennsylvania Freeman in Philadelphia, one of the leading antislavery papers in the North, formerly known as the National Enquirer. In May 1838, the publication moved its offices to the newly-opened Pennsylvania Hall on North Sixth Street, which was shortly after burned by a pro-slavery mob. Whittier also continued to write poetry and nearly all of his poems in this period dealt with the problem of slavery.
By the end of the 1830s, the unity of the abolitionist movement had begun to fracture. Whittier stuck to his belief that moral action apart from political effort was futile. He knew that success required legislative change, not merely moral suasion. This opinion alone engendered a bitter split from Garrison, and Whittier went on to become a founding member of the Liberty Party in 1839. By 1843, he was announcing the triumph of the fledgling party: "Liberty party is no longer an experiment. It is vigorous reality, exerting... a powerful influence". Whittier also unsuccessfully encouraged Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to join the party. He took editing jobs with the Middlesex Standard in Lowell, Massachusetts and the Essex Transcript in Amesbury until 1844. While in Lowell, he met Lucy Larcom, who became a lifelong friend.
In 1845, he began writing his essay "The Black Man" which included an anecdote about John Fountain, a free black who was jailed in Virginia for helping slaves escape. After his release, Fountain went on a speaking tour and thanked Whittier for writing his story.
Around this time, the stresses of editorial duties, worsening health, and dangerous mob violence caused him to have a physical breakdown. Whittier went home to Amesbury, and remained there for the rest of his life, ending his active participation in abolition. Even so, he continued to believe that the best way to gain abolitionist support was to broaden the Liberty Party’s political appeal, and Whittier persisted in advocating the addition of other issues to their platform. He eventually participated in the evolution of the Liberty Party into the Free Soil Party, and some say his greatest political feat was convincing Charles Sumner to run on the Free-Soil ticket for the U.S. Senate in 1850.
Beginning in 1847, Whittier was editor of Gamaliel Bailey's The National Era, one of the most influential abolitionist newspapers in the North. For the next ten years it featured the best of his writing, both as prose and poetry. Being confined to his home and away from the action offered Whittier a chance to write better abolitionist poetry; he was even poet laureate for his party. Whittier's poems often used slavery to symbolize all kinds of oppression (physical, spiritual, economic), and his poems stirred up popular response because they appealed to feelings rather than logic.
Whittier produced two collections of antislavery poetry: Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between 1830 and 1838 and Voices of Freedom (1846). He was an elector in the presidential election of 1860 and of 1864, voting for Abraham Lincoln both times.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended both slavery and his public cause, so Whittier turned to other forms of poetry for the remainder of his life.
Later Life
Whittier was one of the founding contributors of the magazine Atlantic Monthly
One of his most enduring works, Snow-Bound, was first published in 1866. Whittier was surprised by its financial success, earning some $10,000 from the first edition. In 1867, Whittier asked James Thomas Fields to get him a ticket to a reading by Charles Dickens during the British author's visit to the United States. After the event, he wrote a letter describing his experience:
My eyes ached all next day from the intensity of my gazing. I do not think his voice naturally particularly fine, but he uses it with great effect. He has wonderful dramatic power... I like him better than any public reader I have ever before heard.
Whittier spent the last few winters of his life, from 1876 to 1892, at Oak Knoll, the home of his cousins in Danvers, Massachusetts. Whittier died on September 7, 1892, at a friend's home in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. He is buried in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
Poetry
Whittier's first two published books were Legends of New England (1831) and the poem Moll Pitcher (1832). In 1833 he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years. This use of poetry in the service of his political beliefs is illustrated by his book Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question.
Highly regarded in his lifetime and for a period thereafter, he is now largely remembered for his patriotic poem Barbara Frietchie, Snow-Bound, and a number of poems turned into hymns. Of these the best known is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, taken from his poem The Brewing of Soma. As such it has become extremely popular sung to the English composer Hubert Parry's tune Repton taken from the 1888 oratorio Judith and set to the latter part of Whittier's poem in 1924 by Dr George Gilbert Stocks. It is also sung as the hymn Rest, by Frederick Maker, and Charles Ives also set a part of it to music.
On its own, the hymn appears sentimental, though in the context of the entire poem, the stanzas make greater sense, being intended as a contrast with the fevered spirit of pre-Christian worship and that of some modern Christians.
Whittier's Quaker universalism is better illustrated,however, by the hymn that begins:
O Brother Man, fold to thy heart thy brother:
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer.
His sometimes contrasting sense of the need for strong action against injustice can be seen in his poem "To Rönge" in honor of Johannes Ronge, the German religious figure and rebel leader of the 1848 rebellion in Germany:
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then:
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men;
Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit,
The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
Whittier's poem "At Port Royal 1861" describes the experience of Northern abolitionists arriving at Port Royal, South Carolina, as teachers and missionaries for the slaves who had been left behind when their owners fled because the Union Navy would arrive to blockade the coast. The poem includes the "Song of the Negro Boatmen," written in dialect:
Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come
To set de people free;
An' massa tink it day ob doom,
An' we ob jubilee.
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
He jus' as 'trong as den;
He say de word: we las' night slaves;
To-day, de Lord's freemen.
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We'll hab de rice an' corn:
Oh, nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
De driver blow his horn!
Of all the poetry inspired by the Civil War, the "Song of the Negro Boatmen" was one of the most widely printed, and though Whittier never actually visited Port Royal, an abolitionist working there described his "Song of the Negro Boatmen" as "wonderfully applicable as we were being rowed across Hilton Head Harbor among United States gunboats."
Criticism
Nathaniel Hawthorne dismissed Whittier's Literary Recreations and Miscellanies (1854): "Whittier's book is poor stuff! I like the man, but have no high opinion either of his poetry or his prose." Editor George Ripley, however, found Whittier's poetry refreshing and said it had a "stately movement of versification, grandeur of imagery, a vein of tender and solemn pathos, cheerful trust" and a "pure and ennobling character". Boston critic Edwin Percy Whipple noted Whittier's moral and ethical tone mingled with sincere emotion. He wrote, "In reading this last volume, I feel as if my soul had taken a bath in holy water." Later scholars and critics questioned the depth of Whittier's poetry. One was Karl Keller, who noted, "Whittier has been a writer to love, not to belabor."
Legacy
Whittier's family farm, known as the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead or simply "Whittier's Birthplace", is now a historic site open to the public. His later residence in Amesbury, where he lived for 56 years, is also open to the public, now known as the John Greenleaf Whittier Home. Whittier's hometown of Haverhill has named many buildings and landmarks in his honor including J.G. Whittier Middle School, Greenleaf Elementary, and Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School. Numerous other schools around the country also bear his name.
A bridge named for Whittier, built in the style of the Sagamore and Bourne Bridges spanning Cape Cod Canal, carries Interstate 95 from Amesbury to Newburyport over the Merrimack River. A covered bridge spanning the Bearcamp River in Ossipee, New Hampshire is also named for Whittier, as is a nearby mountain.
The city of Whittier, California is named after the poet, as are the communities of Whittier, Alaska, and Whittier, Iowa, the Minneapolis neighborhood of Whittier, the Denver, Colorado, neighborhood of Whittier, and the town of Greenleaf, Idaho. Both Whittier College and Whittier Law School are also named after him. A park in the Saint Boniface area of Winnipeg is named after the poet in recognition of his poem "The Red River Voyageur".
The alternate history story P.'s Correspondence (1846) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, considered the first such story ever published in English, includes the notice "Whittier, a fiery Quaker youth, to whom the muse had perversely assigned a battle-trumpet, got himself lynched, in South Carolina". The date of that event in Hawthorne's invented timeline was 1835.