Laying Up Treasure

From the Mahabharata.


Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer
Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year
Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings
Nor thieves can take away. When all the things
Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall,
Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He was born on December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and died on September 7, 1892, in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings as well as his association with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers whose work became notable in American literature in the 19th century.

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Crucifixion

John Greenleaf Whittier, Simple Poetry

Immortal Love, Forever Full

John Greenleaf Whittier, Simple Poetry

Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott - (Luthers Hymn)

John Greenleaf Whittier, Simple Poetry

Massachusetts To Virginia

John Greenleaf Whittier, Simple Poetry

English

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Giving And Taking

"Who gives and hides the giving hand,
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs
The burden of the sea and land.

Who gives to whom hath naught been given,
His gift in need, though small indeed
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,
Is large as earth and rich as heaven.

Forget it not, O man, to whom
A gift shall fall, while yet on earth;
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth
Recall it in the lives to come.

Who broods above a wrong in thought
Sins much; but greater sin is his
Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses,
Shall count the holy alms as nought.

Who dares to curse the hands that bless
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost;
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Beholding man's unthankfulness....

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A Lay Of Old Time

One morning of the first sad Fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall,
But on the outer side.

She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
For the chaste garb of old;
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
For Eden's drupes of gold.

Behind them, smiling in the morn,
Their forfeit garden lay,
Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
The desert stretched away.

They heard the air above them fanned,
A light step on the sward,
And lo! they saw before them stand
The angel of the Lord!

"Arise," he said, "why look behind,
When hope is all before,
And patient hand and willing mind,
Your loss may yet restore?

"I leave with you a spell whose power
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In The Evil Days

The evil days have come, the poor
Are made a prey;
Bar up the hospitable door,
Put out the fire-lights, point no more
The wanderer's way.
For Pity now is crime; the chain
Which binds our States
Is melted at her hearth in twain,
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain:
Close up her gates.
Our Union, like a glacier stirred
By voice below,
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,
A beggar's crust, a kindly word
May overthrow!
Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast
Our blood and name;
Bursting its century-bolted frost,
Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast
Cries out for shame!
Oh for the open firmament,
The prairie free,
The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
The Bushman's tree!
Than web of Persia...

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Wealth

He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them. Psalm 39:6.


O soul, it is not thine,
But lent to thee in trust
That thou may'st make God's glory shine,
Secured from moth and rust.

Thou can'st not take one mite
Except as thou dost give
And waft it in the golden light
Where heaven's glories live.

Go look for those in need
The hungry and the cold.
Kind words and actions are the seed
Which yield their fruits of gold.

Give to the heathen world
Knowledge of Christ our Lord;
Pray that his banner be unfurled;
Send forth, his priceless word.

He lived for us and died,
And intercedes above.
His blood, a sacrificial tide,
Redeems us by his love.

"Barbarian, bond and free,
The wise a...

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Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
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The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Natures hand,
And none from that of Art.

A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.

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The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines re...

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Garrison

The storm and peril overpast,
The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
The place which thou alone canst fill.
Confirm the lesson taught of old
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Not for thyself, but for the slave
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
We heard a tender under song;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong.
Now past and present are as one;
The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
Thy immortality of love.
With somewhat of thy lofty faith
We lay thy outworn garment by...

John Greenleaf Whittier