JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 385 



" It is done ! 



Clang of bell and roar of gun 

 Send the tidings up and down. 



How the belfries rock and reel! 



How the great guns, peal on peal, 

 Fling the joy from town to town! 



" Did we dare, 



In our agony of prayer, 

 Ask for more than Me has done? 



When was ever His right hand 



Over any time or land 

 Stretched as now beneath the sun? 



• •■••• 



" Ring and swing, 



Bells of joy! On morning's wing 

 Send the song of praise abroad! 



"With a sound of broken chains, 



Tell the nations that He reigns 

 Who alone is Lord and God! " 



These few extracts must suffice to represent the most earnest 

 work he did for above thirty years. They show, I think, the 

 same sincerity, the same simplicity, the same earnestness, that 

 marked his other work. And he knew the rare happiness of 

 complete conquest. Beginning with all the world against him, 

 he found himself for the last twenty years of his life in a world 

 where all were against his foes. 



In view of this, there are two extracts from his writings, — 

 one in prose and one in verse, — without which, I think, our 

 impression of him would be seriously incomplete. For they 

 show that he possessed the power which is perhaps the ultimate 

 test of manly greatness, — the power of serenely recognizing 

 the worth of men from whom for years he honestly and pas- 

 sionately differed. The first is a letter concerning Edward 

 Everett. 



" When the grave closed over him who added new lustre to the old 

 and honored name of Quincy, all eyes instinctively turned to Edward 

 Everett as the last of that venerated class of patriotic civilians who, out- 

 living all dissent and jealousy and party prejudice, hold their reputation 

 by the secure tenure of the universal appreciation of its worth as a com- 

 mon treasure of the republic. Tt is not for me to pronounce his eulogy. 

 . . . My secluded country life has afforded me few opportunities of pe?- 

 sonal intercourse with him, while my pronounced radicalism on the great 

 vol. xxviii. (n. s. xx.) 25 



