The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces
     In the low hovel's door,
And prayers went up from all the dark by-places
     And Ghettos of the poor.

The pallid toiler and the negro chattel,
     The vagrant of the street,
The human dice wherewith in games of battle
     The lords of earth compete,

Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping,
     All swelled the long lament,
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping
     His viewless monument!

For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor,
     In the long heretofore,
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender,
     Has England's turf closed o'er.

And if there fell from out her grand old steeples
     No crash of brazen wail,
The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples
     Swept in on every gale.

It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows,
     And from the tropic calms