John Greenleaf Whittier

"You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought."

-John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an American poet born on December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. From 1827 to 1828, Whittier attended Haverhill Academy while also being a shoemaker and a schoolteacher. In 1831, his first book, Legends of New England in Prose and Verse, was published. Pre-civil war, Whittier wrote several essays, articles, and poems dealing with abolition. As an abolitionist, Whittier worked for the American Anti-slavery Society and founded the antislavery Liberty Party in 1840. After the civil war, Whittier started writing about religion, nature, and rural life. His most popular work, Snow Bound, was published in 1866 and sold 20,000 copies. On September 7, 1892, Whittier passed away in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. 

The Cry Of A Lost Soul

In that black forest, where, when day is done,

With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon

Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,

A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood,

The long, despairing moan of solitude

And darkness and the absence of all good,

Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear,

So full of hopeless agony and fear,

His heart stands still and listens like his ear.

The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll,

Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's thole,

Crosses himself, and whispers, 'A lost soul!'

'No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well,--

It is the pained soul of some infidel

Or cursed heretic that cries from hell.

*This is the first few stanzas*

Forgiveness

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

So, turning gloomily from my fellowmen,

One summer Sabbath day I strolled among

the green mounds of the village burial place;

Where, pondering how all human love and hate

Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,

Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face,

And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of our common grave,

Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,

Awed for myself, and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

Analyzing the two poems

The two poems that we chose are Forgiveness and The Cry of a Lost Soul. Even though both of these poems have been written by John Greenleaf Whittier, there are a number of similarities and differences between the two by their mood, rhyme scheme, and their tone.

Between these two poems, there are a few amount of similarities. One similarity between these two poems is that when Whittier writes a word or sentence that is associated with the title, he puts an exclamation mark at the end to emphasize it.

There are more differences between the two poems than there are similarities. One difference is the rhyme scheme of the poems. For The Cry of a Lost Soul, the rhyme scheme is aaa, bbb, ccc meaning that in one stanza all of the words rhymes with each other. For Forgiveness, we believe the rhyme scheme is ababcddcfgfcgg. Whittier is famous for writing lengthy poems such as, The Cry of a Lost Soul with it having 15 stanzas however Forgiveness is one of his shorter poems with it having only one stanza.

To conclude, we believe that both of the poems are very different from each other. There are not that many similarities between the two except for how they were worded. We also both enjoyed reading Forgiveness more because it was easier to understand for us and it had a deep message for people to know.