Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1891 — WHITTIER WRITES NO MORE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHITTIER WRITES NO MORE.

Th* Aged Poet Besigos All Mental Effort and Awaits the End. Whittier tells us that his work is done. The white-haired poet has laid down the pen. he says, forever. The twilight is closing softly round him; the vital fires that have kept him clear-

sighted and erect for more than eighty years are burning low. But it is a kindly and most delightful twilight; one that is more to be desirecf than the bright glare of many a splendid noon. There is in it no hint of despondency or darkness. If he who sits within the purple circle glances backward it is to a glorious day whose light of freedom his own pen ‘helped to kindle; if onward it is toward the eternal stars that are rising over the changeless hills. Not to many mortals is vouchsafed such a happy, tender hour of restfulness and waiting; there are not many mortals who have so deserved its benediction. For it was not in peaceful repose or easy contentment that the memories that hallow and the homage that surrounds Whittier’s declining years were won. The young people of to-day think of the Quaker poet as a gentle, lovable old man who dreams the hours away before the embers of his open fire at Oak Knoll, and whose occasional verses breathe an exquisite serenity and peace. But time was when the hand of this kindly dreamer struck hard and sharply a tense chord that helped wake the sleeping conscience of a nation. Time was, and that not so long ago, when the Quaker enthusiast gathered up and fused into burning intensity in his songs all the longing and wrong and soriow of a race in bondage. The nation heard: blqpd-drenched battlefields and heaps of broken shackles were its answer. It is for his dauntless services in behalf of the weak and oppressed that the mature men and women of the English-speaking race to-day hold Whittier in such veneration. It is because ip the face of a great national crime he made himself the voice of the justice that is divine and the love that is diviner than justice: because his unshrinking devotion to humanity took no account of accidents of color; because when the pulpit was silent, the press dumb, he battled fearlessly and unselfishly for his 4 fellow-men, that Whittier has so rich a reverence in the love of the world’s best men and women. He has been prophet and poet all in one. There have not been many like him, and there will not be. Not only America but the world is better and richer to-day for his life and labors. One of the bravest and purest of humanity’s helpers, Whittier has amply won his rest.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.