Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney Poems

Anne Whitney Biography

Anne Whitney (1821 – 1915) was an American sculptor and poet. She was born in Watertown, Massachusetts on September 2, 1821 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 23, 1915. As with so many of the early, successful 19th Century women sculptors Whitney came from a liberal, in her case, Unitarian, supportive family background. Whitney was homeschooled as a youngster, but since women of her day would not be admitted to Yale or Harvard universities, she could not attend college. In 1846 she opened a small school in Salem, Massachusetts. Traveling to Europe she studied in Rome, Munich, and Paris before returning to the United States. Among her well known public monuments is the statue of Samuel Adams (1876) located in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol, Washington D.C., the statue Leif the Discoverer (1887) in Boston, Massachusetts , with another edition that same year placed in Juneau Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Whitney was an accomplished portraitist, completing statues and busts of such well know individuals as John Keats, Samuel Adams, Toussaint l'Ouverture, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Frances Willard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Sewall, Alice Freeman Palmer, Robert Gould Shaw, Eben Norton Horsford, Harriet Martineau, Jennie McGraw Fiske, Lucy Stone and others. Other of her works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Amherst College, Cornell University, Harvard University, Smith College, Wellesley College, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Newark, Museum, Mark Twain Memorial, Boston Public Library,)

The Best Poem Of Anne Whitney

Enfolding Essence

Enfolding essence-binding all in one,
All motion and all life,-the near, the far,-
August,-enthroned beyond or sight or sun
And yet most intimate of things that are!-

Bathed in a miracle of light, I grope;
And darkly question the supernal will
Which gave us life and fed it with hope
That time could neither shatter nor fulfill.

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