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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  Samuel E. Sewall

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

Appendix II. Poems Printed in the ‘Life of Whittier’

Samuel E. Sewall

  • [An inscription for a marble bust, modelled by Anne Whitney, and placed in the Cary Library, Lexington, Mass., May, 1884.]


  • LIKE that ancestral judge who bore his name,

    Faithful to Freedom and to Truth, he gave,

    When all the air was hot with wrath and blame,

    His youth and manhood to the fettered slave.

    And never Woman in her suffering saw

    A helper tender, wise, and brave as he;

    Lifting her burden of unrighteous law,

    He shamed the boast of ancient chivalry.

    Noiseless as light that melts the darkness is,

    He wrought as duty led and honor bid,

    No trumpet heralds victories like his,—

    The unselfish worker in his work is hid.