John Greenleaf Whittier Poems

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John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and forceful advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He was born to John and Abigail (Hussey) at the rural homestead in 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. During the winter term, he attended the district school, and was first introduced to poetry by a teacher. Whittier became editor of a number of newspapers in Boston and Haverhill, as well as the New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England. His first two published books were Legends of New England (1831) and the poem Moll Pitcher (1832). In 1838, a mob burned Whittier out of his offices in the antislavery center of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia.[1] Highly regarded in his lifetime and for a period thereafter, he is now largely remembered for his patriotic poem Barbara Frietchie and for a number of poems turned into hymns. Although Victorian in style, his hymns exhibit sentimentality, imagination and universalism which differ from other 19th century hymns[citation needed]. Another widely known piece is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, taken from his poem The Brewing of Soma. Whittier's Quaker beliefs are illustrated by the hymn that begins:

the pumpkin
 
 
Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,... [read poem]
an autograph
 
 
I write my name as one,
On sands by waves o'errun
Or winter's frosted pane,
Traces a ... [read poem]
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