John Pierpont

John Pierpont (April 6, 1785 – August 27, 1866) was a poet, and also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and lastly a Congregational minister. His most famous poem is The Airs of Palestine.

Quotes

• A weapon that comes down as still
  As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
  But executes a freeman's will,
  As lightning does the will of God;
  And from its force nor doors nor locks
  Can shield you,—'t is the ballot-box.
  • A Word from a Petitioner, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• From every place below the skies
  The grateful song, the fervent prayer,—
  The incense of the heart, —may rise
  To heaven, and find acceptance there.
  • Every Place a Temple, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "This is that incense of the heart / Whose fragrance smells to heaven" Nathaniel Cotton, The Fireside, stanza 11.

External links

• The Antislavery Poems of John Pierpont, at the Antislavery Literature Project
• The Tocsin, a broadsheet poem by John Pierpont, at the Antislavery Literature Project
• The Anti-slavery poems of John Pierpont By John Pierpont. Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection. (Reprinted by) Cornell University Library Digital Collections
• John Pierpont works Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection