John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsChanning
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Nor vainly did old genius paint
God’s great and crowning miracle,
The hero and the saint!
Can we our sainted ones discern;
And feel, while with them on the way,
Our hearts within us burn.
Which, world-wide, echo Channing’s fame,
As one of Heaven’s anointed men,
Have sanctified his name.
And shut from him her saintly prize,
Whom, in the world’s great calendar,
All men shall canonize.
Beneath his green embowering wood,
To me it seems but yesterday
Since at his side I stood.
The western wind blew fresh and free,
And glimmered down the orchard lanes
The white surf of the sea.
Life’s highest purpose understood,
And, like his blessed Master, knew
The joy of doing good.
Yet on the lips of England’s poor
And toiling millions dwelt his name,
With blessings evermore.
The sun looks o’er the Carib sea,
It blended with the freeman’s prayer
And song of jubilee.
The ills her suffering children know,
The squalor of the city’s throng,
The green field’s want and woe.
Of sympathetic sorrow stole,
Like a still shadow, passionless,
The sorrow of the soul.
How hearts were answering to his own,
And Freedom’s rising murmur rolled
Up to the dull-eared throne,
Thrill through that frail and pain-worn frame,
And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes,
A still and earnest flame.
The human heart,—the Faith-sown seeds
Which ripen in the soil of love
To high heroic deeds.
The Babel strife of tongues had ceased,
And at one common altar knelt
The Quaker and the priest.
And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim,
For that brief meeting, each pursued
The path allotted him.
And vale with Channing’s dying word!
How are the hearts of freemen still
By that great warning stirred!
And pleads, with zeal unfelt before,
The honest right of British toil,
The claim of England’s poor.
Old fears subside, old hatreds melt,
And, stretching o’er the sea’s blue wall,
The Saxon greets the Celt.
The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim,
The delver in the Cornwall mines,
Look up with hope to him.
Dark feeders of the forge’s flame,
Pale watchers at the loom and wheel,
Repeat his honored name.
Of converse on Rhode Island’s strand
Lives in the calm, resistless power
Which moves our fatherland.
And still the fitting word He speeds
And Truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds.
What dust upon the spirit lies?
God keeps the sacred life he gave,—
The prophet never dies!