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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  Daniel Wheeler

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

Personal Poems

Daniel Wheeler

  • Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country.


  • O DEARLY loved!

    And worthy of our love! No more

    Thy aged form shall rise before

    The hushed and waiting worshipper,

    In meek obedience utterance giving

    To words of truth, so fresh and living,

    That, even to the inward sense,

    They bore unquestioned evidence

    Of an anointed Messenger!

    Or, bowing down thy silver hair

    In reverent awfulness of prayer,

    The world, its time and sense, shut out

    The brightness of Faith’s holy trance

    Gathered upon thy countenance,

    As if each lingering cloud of doubt,

    The cold, dark shadows resting here

    In Time’s unluminous atmosphere,

    Were lifted by an angel’s hand,

    And through them on thy spiritual eye

    Shone down the blessedness on high,

    The glory of the Better Land!

    The oak has fallen!

    While, meet for no good work, the vine

    May yet its worthless branches twine,

    Who knoweth not that with thee fell

    A great man in our Israel?

    Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,

    Thy feet with Zion’s dews still wet,

    And in thy hand retaining yet

    The pilgrim’s staff and scallop-shell!

    Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free,

    Across the Neva’s cold morass

    The breezes from the Frozen Sea

    With winter’s arrowy keenness pass;

    Or where the unwarning tropic gale

    Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,

    Or where the noon-hour’s fervid heat

    Against Tahiti’s mountains beat;

    The same mysterious Hand which gave

    Deliverance upon land and wave,

    Tempered for thee the blasts which blew

    Ladaga’s frozen surface o’er,

    And blessed for thee the baleful dew

    Of evening upon Eimeo’s shore,

    Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,

    Midst our soft airs and opening flowers

    Hath given thee a grave!

    His will be done,

    Who seeth not as man, whose way

    Is not as ours! ’T is well with thee!

    Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay

    Disquieted thy closing day,

    But, evermore, thy soul could say,

    “My Father careth still for me!”

    Called from thy hearth and home,—from her,

    The last bud on thy household tree,

    The last dear one to minister

    In duty and in love to thee,

    From all which nature holdeth dear,

    Feeble with years and worn with pain,

    To seek our distant land again,

    Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing

    The things which should befall thee here,

    Whether for labor or for death,

    In childlike trust serenely going

    To that last trial of thy faith!

    Oh, far away,

    Where never shines our Northern star

    On that dark waste which Balboa saw

    From Darien’s mountains stretching far,

    So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there,

    With forehead to its damp wind bare,

    He bent his mailëd knee in awe;

    In many an isle whose coral feet

    The surges of that ocean beat,

    In thy palm shadows, Oahu,

    And Honolulu’s silver bay,

    Amidst Owyhee’s hills of blue,

    And taro-plains of Tooboonai,

    Are gentle hearts, which long shall be

    Sad as our own at thought of thee,

    Worn sowers of Truth’s holy seed,

    Whose souls in weariness and need

    Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.

    For blessëd by our Father’s hand

    Was thy deep love and tender care,

    Thy ministry and fervent prayer,—

    Grateful as Eshcol’s clustered vine

    To Israel in a weary land!

    And they who drew

    By thousands round thee, in the hour

    Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,

    That He who bade the islands keep

    Silence before Him, might renew

    Their strength with His unslumbering power,

    They too shall mourn that thou art gone,

    That nevermore thy aged lip

    Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,

    Of those who first, rejoicing, heard

    Through thee the Gospel’s glorious word,—

    Seals of thy true apostleship.

    And, if the brightest diadem,

    Whose gems of glory purely burn

    Around the ransomed ones in bliss,

    Be evermore reserved for them

    Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn

    Many to righteousness,

    May we not think of thee as wearing

    That star-like crown of light, and bearing,

    Amidst Heaven’s white and blissful band,

    Th’ unfading palm-branch in thy hand;

    And joining with a seraph’s tongue

    In that new song the elders sung,

    Ascribing to its blessed Giver

    Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!

    Farewell!

    And though the ways of Zion mourn

    When her strong ones are called away,

    Who like thyself have calmly borne

    The heat and burden of the day,

    Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth

    His ancient watch around us keepeth;

    Still, sent from His creating hand,

    New witnesses for Truth shall stand,

    New instruments to sound abroad

    The Gospel of a risen Lord;

    To gather to the fold once more

    The desolate and gone astray,

    The scattered of a cloudy day,

    And Zion’s broken walls restore;

    And, through the travail and the toil

    Of true obedience, minister

    Beauty for ashes, and the oil

    Of joy for mourning, unto her!

    So shall her holy bounds increase

    With walls of praise and gates of peace:

    So shall the Vine, which martyr tears

    And blood sustained in other years,

    With fresher life be clothed upon;

    And to the world in beauty show

    Like the rose-plant of Jericho,

    And glorious as Lebanon!

    1847.