Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Poems Subjective and Reminiscent

My Psalm

I MOURN no more my vanished years:

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,

My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,

I hear the glad streams run;

The windows of my soul I throw

Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind

I look in hope or fear;

But, grateful, take the good I find,

The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,

To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God’s hand

Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay

Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away

I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play

Among the ripening corn,

Nor freshness of the flowers of May

Blow through the autumn morn;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look

Through fringëd lids to heaven,

And the pale aster in the brook

Shall see its image given;—

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,

The south-wind softly sigh,

And sweet, calm days in golden haze

Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word

Rebuke an age of wrong;

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword

Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—

To build as to destroy;

Nor less my heart for others feel

That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds

To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told!

Enough that blessings undeserved

Have marked my erring track;

That wheresoe’er my feet have swerved,

His chastening turned me back;

That more and more a Providence

Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense

Sweet with eternal good;—

That death seems but a covered way

Which opens into light,

Wherein no blinded child can stray

Beyond the Father’s sight;

That care and trial seem at last,

Through Memory’s sunset air,

Like mountain-ranges overpast,

In purple distance fair;

That all the jarring notes of life

Seem blending in a psalm,

And all the angles of its strife

Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart,

And so the west-winds play;

And all the windows of my heart

I open to the day.

1859.