1. whittier, john greenleaf the American "Quaker Poet," born at Haverhill, in Massachusetts, the son of a poor farmer; wrought, like Burns, at field work, and acquired a loving sympathy with Nature, natural people, and natural scenes; took to journalism at length, and became a keen abolitionist and the poet-laureate of abolition; his poems are few and fugitive (1807-1893).