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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420580" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>My Namesake</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You scarcely need my tardy thanks,<br>Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend--<br>A green leaf on your own Green Banks--<br>The memory of your friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides<br>The sobered brow and lessening hair<br>For aught I know, the myrtled sides<br>Of Helicon are bare.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their scallop-shells so many bring<br>The fabled founts of song to try,<br>They've drained, for aught I know, the spring<br>Of Aganippe dry.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah well!--The wreath the Muses braid<br>Proves often Folly's cap and bell;<br>Methinks, my ample beaver's shade<br>May serve my turn as well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt<br>Be paid by those I love in life.<br>Why should the unborn critic whet<br>For me his scalping-knife?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why should the stranger peer and pry<br>One's vacant house of life about,<br>And drag for curious ear and eye<br>His faults and follies out?--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon,<br>With chaff of words, the garb he wore,<br>As corn-husks when the ear is gone<br>Are rustled all the more?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let kindly Silence close again,<br>The picture vanish from the eye,<br>And on the dim and misty main<br>Let the small ripple die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet not the less I own your claim<br>To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine.<br>Hang, if it please you so, my name<br>Upon your household line.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide<br>Her chosen names, I envy none<br>A mother's love, a father's pride,<br>Shall keep alive my own!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still shall that name as now recall<br>The young leaf wet with morning dew,<br>The glory where the sunbeams fall<br>The breezy woodlands through.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That name shall be a household word,<br>A spell to waken smile or sigh;<br>In many an evening prayer be heard<br>And cradle lullaby.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thou, dear child, in riper days<br>When asked the reason of thy name,<br>Shalt answer: One 't were vain to praise<br>Or censure bore the same.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Some blamed him, some believed him good,<br>The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two;<br>He reconciled as best he could<br>Old faith and fancies new.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'In him the grave and playful mixed,<br>And wisdom held with folly truce,<br>And Nature compromised betwixt<br>Good fellow and recluse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He loved his friends, forgave his foes;<br>And, if his words were harsh at times,<br>He spared his fellow-men,--his blows<br>Fell only on their crimes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He loved the good and wise, but found<br>His human heart to all akin<br>Who met him on the common ground<br>Of suffering and of sin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Whate'er his neighbors might endure<br>Of pain or grief his own became;<br>For all the ills he could not cure<br>He held himself to blame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'His good was mainly an intent,<br>His evil not of forethought done;<br>The work he wrought was rarely meant<br>Or finished as begun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Ill served his tides of feeling strong<br>To turn the common mills of use;<br>And, over restless wings of song,<br>His birthright garb hung loose!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'His eye was beauty's powerless slave,<br>And his the ear which discord pains;<br>Few guessed beneath his aspect grave<br>What passions strove in chains.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He had his share of care and pain,<br>No holiday was life to him;<br>Still in the heirloom cup we drain<br>The bitter drop will swim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird<br>And there a flower beguiled his way;<br>And, cool, in summer noons, he heard<br>The fountains plash and play.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'On all his sad or restless moods<br>The patient peace of Nature stole;<br>The quiet of the fields and woods<br>Sank deep into his soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He worshipped as his fathers did,<br>And kept the faith of childish days,<br>And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,<br>He loved the good old ways.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The simple tastes, the kindly traits,<br>The tranquil air, and gentle speech,<br>The silence of the soul that waits<br>For more than man to teach.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The cant of party, school, and sect,<br>Provoked at times his honest scorn,<br>And Folly, in its gray respect,<br>He tossed on satire's horn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'But still his heart was full of awe<br>And reverence for all sacred things;<br>And, brooding over form and law,'<br>He saw the Spirit's wings!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud;<br>He heard far voices mock his own,<br>The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,<br>Long roll of waves unknown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The arrows of his straining sight<br>Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage,<br>Like lost guides calling left and right,<br>Perplexed his doubtful age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Like childhood, listening for the sound<br>Of its dropped pebbles in the well,<br>All vainly down the dark profound<br>His brief-lined plummet fell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'So, scattering flowers with pious pains<br>On old beliefs, of later creeds,<br>Which claimed a place in Truth's domains,<br>He asked the title-deeds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He saw the old-time's groves and shrines<br>In the long distance fair and dim;<br>And heard, like sound of far-off pines,<br>The century-mellowed hymn!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He dared not mock the Dervish whirl,<br>The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell;<br>God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl<br>Might sanctify the shell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'While others trod the altar stairs<br>He faltered like the publican;<br>And, while they praised as saints, his prayers<br>Were those of sinful man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law,<br>The trembling faith alone sufficed,<br>That, through its cloud and flame, he saw<br>The sweet, sad face of Christ!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And listening, with his forehead bowed,<br>Heard the Divine compassion fill<br>The pauses of the trump and cloud<br>With whispers small and still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The words he spake, the thoughts he penned,<br>Are mortal as his hand and brain,<br>But, if they served the Master's end,<br>He has not lived in vain!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Heaven make thee better than thy name,<br>Child of my friends!--For thee I crave<br>What riches never bought, nor fame<br>To mortal longing gave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I pray the prayer of Plato old:<br>God make thee beautiful within,<br>And let thine eyes the good behold<br>In everything save sin!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Imagination held in check<br>To serve, not rule, thy poised mind;<br>Thy Reason, at the frown or beck<br>Of Conscience, loose or bind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No dreamer thou, but real all,--<br>Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth;<br>Life made by duty epical<br>And rhythmic with the truth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So shall that life the fruitage yield<br>Which trees of healing only give,<br>And green-leafed in the Eternal field<br>Of God, forever live!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420580" data-title="My Namesake de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.

You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend--
A green leaf on your own Green Banks--
The memory of your friend.

For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides
The..."></div>
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