Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Poems Subjective and Reminiscent

My Thanks

’T IS said that in the Holy Land

The angels of the place have blessed

The pilgrim’s bed of desert sand,

Like Jacob’s stone of rest.

That down the hush of Syrian skies

Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings

The song whose holy symphonies

Are beat by unseen wings;

Till starting from his sandy bed,

The wayworn wanderer looks to see

The halo of an angel’s head

Shine through the tamarisk-tree.

So through the shadows of my way

Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,

So at the weary close of day

Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.

That pilgrim pressing to his goal

May pause not for the vision’s sake,

Yet all fair things within his soul

The thought of it shall wake:

The graceful palm-tree by the well,

Seen on the far horizon’s rim;

The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle,

Bent timidly on him;

Each pictured saint, whose golden hair

Streams sunlike through the convent’s gloom;

Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,

And loving Mary’s tomb;

And thus each tint or shade which falls,

From sunset cloud or waving tree,

Along my pilgrim path, recalls

The pleasant thought of thee.

Of one in sun and shade the same,

In weal and woe my steady friend,

Whatever by that holy name

The angels comprehend.

Not blind to faults and follies, thou

Hast never failed the good to see,

Nor judged by one unseemly bough

The upward-struggling tree.

These light leaves at thy feet I lay,—

Poor common thoughts on common things,

Which time is shaking, day by day,

Like feathers from his wings;

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,

To nurturing care but little known,

Their good was partly learned of thee,

Their folly is my own.

That tree still clasps the kindly mould,

Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,

And weaving its pale green with gold,

Still shines the sunlight through.

There still the morning zephyrs play,

And there at times the spring bird sings,

And mossy trunk and fading spray

Are flowered with glossy wings.

Yet, even in genial sun and rain,

Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;

The wanderer on its lonely plain

Erelong shall miss its shade.

O friend beloved, whose curious skill

Keeps bright the last year’s leaves and flowers,

With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill

The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring

May well defy the wintry cold,

Until, in Heaven’s eternal spring,

Life’s fairer ones unfold.

1847.