"Let us press The golden cluster on our brave old flag In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain." _A Word for the Hour._ So he wrote in January, 1861. But afterward he becomes a pained but sadly approving spectator of the inevitable conflict:-- "Then Freedom sternly said: 'I shun No strife nor pang beneath the sun, When human rights are staked and won. * * * * * The moor of Marston felt my tread, Through Jersey snows the march I led, My voice Magenta's charges sped.'" _The Watchers._ As a Friend, he and his brethren could not personally engage in war. But they could minister to the sick and dying, and care for the slave. "THE SLAVE IS OURS!" he says,-- "And we may tread the sick-bed floors Where strong men pine, And, down the groaning corridors, Pour freely from our liberal stores The oil and wine." _Anniversary Poem._ "Barbara Frietchie" is, of course, the best of these war lyrics. The "Song of the Negro Boatmen" was set to music and sung from Maine to California during the war days:-- "De yam will grow, de cotton blow, We'll hab de rice an' corn; O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear De driver blow his horn!" After "Voices of Freedom," in the complete edition of Whittier's poems, come a cluster of Biblical, or Old Testament poems,--"Palestine," "Ezekiel," "The Wife of Manoah to her Husband," "The Cities of the Plain," "The Crucifixion," and "The Star of Bethlehem." The best of these, perhaps, are "Cities of the Plain," and "Crucifixion,"--the former intense and thrilling in style, and suggesting the "Sennacherib" and "Waterloo" of Byron; the latter a high, solemn chant, and well calculated to touch the religious heart. Whittier has drawn great refreshment and inspiration from the thrice-winnowed wheat and the living-water wells of Old Testament literature. Allusion has already been made to the hymns of our poet. Hymn-book makers have had in his poems a very quarry to work. The hymn tinkers, too, have not spared Whittier even while he was alive, and many of his sacred lyrics have been "adapted" after the manner of hymn-book makers. Dr. Martineau's "Hymns of Praise" (1874) contains seven of Whittier's religious songs; the "Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book" (1868) also has seven; the Plymouth Collection (1855) has eleven, and Longfellow and Johnson's "Hymns of the Spirit" (1864) has twenty-two. The Essex minstrel has written quite a number of children's poems, such as "The Robin," "Red Riding Hood," and "King Solomon and the Ants." He has also compiled two books of selections for children, as has already been mentioned.