Quote by John Greenleaf Whittier
“Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No. It is immortal as immaculate Truth, 'Tis not a blossom shed as soon as youth, Drops from the stem of life—for it will grow, In barren regions, where no waters flow, Nor rays of promise cheats the pensive gloom. A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb, That but itself and darkness nought doth show, It is my love's being yet it cannot die, Nor will it change, though all be changed beside; Though fairest beauty be no longer fair, Though vows be false, and faith itself deny, Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide, And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.”
topics: love
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1807-1892
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
Whittier produced two collections of antislavery poetry: Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between 1830 and 1838 and Voices of Freedom (1846). He was an elector in the presidential election of 1860 and of 1864, voting for Abraham Lincoln both times.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended both slavery and his public cause, so Whittier turned to other forms of poetry for the remainder of his life.