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Mr. Whittier, the Quaker Poet, has lived in Amesbury since 1840. As editor of "The New-England Weekly Review," "Pennsylvania Review," and contributor to "The National Era" and "The Atlantic Monthly," he has everywhere devoted himself to the cause of truth and justice. No poet has spoken with more tenderness for humanity, or waged war more constantly and more defiantly with error and oppression. His intense hatred of wrong, and inexhaustible sympathy for struggling manhood, are always expressed with remarkable force and beauty in his prose and poetry.

PRINCIPAL PRODUCTIONS.

"Mogg Megom," 1836; "Tent on the Beach; ""Voices of Freedom; ""Barefoot Boy;"Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: ""Songs of Labor, and Other Poems;" "Snowbound." Poems in three volumes, or complete in one.

THE ETERNAL GOODNESS.

O FRIENDS with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer!
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument:
Your logic, linked and strong,
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.

But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God: he needeth not
The poor device of man.

I walk, with bare, hushed feet, the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod:

I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.

Ye praise his justice: even such
His pitying love I deem.

Ye seek a king: I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.

Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss :
I hear our Lord's beatitudes,
And prayer upon the cross.

More than your schoolmen teach, within Myself, alas! I know:

Too dark ye can not paint the sin,

Too small the merit show.

I bow my forehead to the dust;
I vail mine eyes for shame;

And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.

I see the wrong that round me lies;
I feel the guilt within;

I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.

Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good.

Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see;
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.

The wrong that pains my soul below
I dare not throne above.

I know not of his hate: I know
His goodness and his love.

I dimly guess, from blessings known,
Of greater out of sight;
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments, too, are right.

I long for household voices gone;
For vanished smiles I long:
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And he can do no wrong.

I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.

And, if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed he will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.

No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove :
I can but give the gifts he gave,
And plead his love for love.

And so beside the silent sea

I wait the muffled oar:

No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.

I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air:

I only know I can not drift
Beyond his love and care.

O brothers! if my faith is vain,
If hopes like these betray,

Pray for me that my feet may gain
The sure and safer way.

And thou, O Lord! by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me if too close I lean
My human heart on thee.

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.

"SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,

Who is losing? who is winning? Are they far? or come they near? Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.”

"Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls. Blood is flowing; men are dying: God have mercy on their souls!" "Who is losing? who is winning?" -"Over hill and over plain I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain-rain.”

"Holy Mother, keep our brothers! Look, Ximena! look once more! " Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,

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Bearing on in strange confusion friend and foeman, foot and horse, Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountaincourse."

"Look forth once more, Ximena!"-"Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder with the cannon at their heels.

"Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat, and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow through them plows the Northern ball.”

Nearer came the storm, and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
"Speak, Ximena, speak, and tell us who has lost and who has won.”
"Alas, alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall:
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!

"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed Mother, save my brain!
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to rise:
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!

"O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my knee: Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst

thou see?

O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal! look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy, mercy! all is o'er!"

"Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded; lay the cross upon his breast:
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said:
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.”

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,

She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.

With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;

With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:

But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain;

And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand, and faintly smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died.

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A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth
From some gentle sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!"
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.

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"Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind.
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive!”

Sink, O Night! among thy mountains; let the cool gray shadows fall;
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled :
In its sheath the saber rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued:

Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint, and lacking food,

Over weak and suffering brothers with a tender care they hung;

And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours;
Upward through its blood and ashes spring afresh the Eden flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer;
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air.

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