[The Complete Works of Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete Works of Whittier

CHAPTER VI
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Was not the whole round world their own?
and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds?
For them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and its stars.

That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life of this city of unwork.

To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:-- "Other hands may grasp the field or forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine; Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine." But look! the clouds are breaking.

"Fair weather cometh out of the north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm.

In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed.
Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar.
THE TRAINING.
"Send for the milingtary." NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.
WHAT'S now in the wind?
Sounds of distant music float in at my window on this still October air.


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