James Terry White (1845–1920) was born in Massachusetts and evolved into rather a Renaissance man through his participation in a variety of interests and activities. He founded a publishing company, served as president of a typewriter company, a mining company, and a rubber company, was vice-president of a press bureau and a pharmacy, and even invented a medical manikin. In between all that, he managed to create several collections of poetry. This poem is usually attributed to John Greenleaf Whittier, but research by the Paris Review and author and scholar Dr. Daniel Swift indicates that a variation of this poem, written by White, appeared in Century magazine in August 1907.