A poem delivered in the first congregational church in the town of Quincy, May 25, 1840 the two hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town |
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 | A poem delivered in the first congregational church in the town of Quincy, May 25, 1840 |  |
And meet it is that we their sons should bring
Unto our thoughts to day that budding spring,
When the first woodman's axe resounded wide
Upon yon hill down by the water's side.—
Wild was the scene—unknown the lonely spot,
Where first they reared the rude and humble cot.
Behind them sparkling in the morning, lay,
Blue as the sky, yon calmly heaving bay,
On whose broad breast yon capes and isles were seen,
Just tinted with the hue of earliest green.
No freighted ships with swift and snowy wings
Drifted across that solitude of things.
Only at times across the water blue
Darted the Indian in his bark canoe,
Or on the pebbled beach with stealthy tread
Glared on the white man as his labor sped.
Before them rose the forest wild—the pines,
The oaks, the cedars hung with trailing vines.
They crushed with heedless step the pale wood-flowers,
With toil and fast they marked the lonely hours,
They watched the savage foe—they felled their trees,
And sang their rude chant in the evening breeze;
Then kindled they their watchfires, while the howl
Of the wild wolf, the shrieking of the owl
Rang on their broken slumbers, till the day
Called them again to labor and to pray.
Methinks I hear them in the shadows dim
Singing amid the woods their twilight hymn;—
The words seem borne away from that old time,
And weave themselves amid my humble rhyme.
Unto our thoughts to day that budding spring,
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Upon yon hill down by the water's side.—
Wild was the scene—unknown the lonely spot,
Where first they reared the rude and humble cot.
Behind them sparkling in the morning, lay,
Blue as the sky, yon calmly heaving bay,
On whose broad breast yon capes and isles were seen,
Just tinted with the hue of earliest green.
No freighted ships with swift and snowy wings
Drifted across that solitude of things.
Only at times across the water blue
Darted the Indian in his bark canoe,
Or on the pebbled beach with stealthy tread
Glared on the white man as his labor sped.
Before them rose the forest wild—the pines,
The oaks, the cedars hung with trailing vines.
They crushed with heedless step the pale wood-flowers,
With toil and fast they marked the lonely hours,
They watched the savage foe—they felled their trees,
And sang their rude chant in the evening breeze;
Then kindled they their watchfires, while the howl
Of the wild wolf, the shrieking of the owl
Rang on their broken slumbers, till the day
Called them again to labor and to pray.
Methinks I hear them in the shadows dim
Singing amid the woods their twilight hymn;—
13
And weave themselves amid my humble rhyme.
| A poem delivered in the first congregational church in the town of Quincy, May 25, 1840 | |