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 |  |
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POEM.
PREFACE.
It is with unfeigned reluctance that the author commits this production to the public. It was hastily prepared, on very brief notice, and written rather for delivery than for publication. Besides, a genuine Poem should spring up spontaneously in the subjective atmosphere of the writer's mind, and not be extorted from him by the artificial forcing-process of a public occasion. It is therefore only in compliance with the urgent request of friends in this vicinity, and the expectation of numerous others at a distance, that, after having more than once abandoned the thought, the author has at length determined on giving it publicity. Should the critic then deem his lines lacking in inspiration, he will appreciate the fact, that it is hard to play the orator and poet on the same stage.
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The fields, the forest, and the leaping rills,
For Spring hath breathed upon us, and the hours
Move to the dial of the budding flowers.
Joy to ye, hills and fountains! once again
Ye have flung off the tyrant winter's chain:
Joy to ye, leaves and blossoms—ye are springing
Fast to the melodies around you ringing:
Joy, joy to all for whom the sunshine brings
New life, new thought, midst tame and common things.
How shall I paint thee, gentle May! how dare
To speak in feeble verse thy glories rare?
The soul that truly would commune with thee,
Like thee forever born again must be.
Yet if we may not praise with lips profane
Thy new created beauty, yet O deign
To lift our spirits and to purify,
That we may feel thy influences nigh.
Hail then, most genial season—blessed May!
Joy be with all who feel thy smile this day:
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Hail to yon meadows, and yon sparkling sea!
Who needs that borrowed dress, historic truth,
To gild with more romance your May-born youth?
Who, with these skies so blue and fields so green,
Would disenchant the life of all the scene,
And with quaint memories of things that were
Add a remoter charm to what is now so fair?
------ “a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.”
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.
Yet we cannot forget, the while we gazeThat had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.”
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.
On what this morn hath gilded with its rays,
Though all is new, and even the verdant soil
Seems made to day, not crowned with ancient toil,
That four times fifty years have passed away,
Since, in the sunlight of another May,
The hardy settler gave this spot a name
Culled from the English home from which he came.
We scarce can feel the years that time hath told,
While leaves and flowers their breathing life unfold.
Yet so it is, with all we see and know:
The shadow of the Past, where'er we go,
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Nought but the Soul, which feels it all, is new.
Braintree was the original name of the settlement. The township was afterwards divided into Braintree, Randolph, and Quincy.
O'er the dim leaves of that recorded book
Which mortals call the Past. The days of old
Come thronging on us fast, as we unfold
The mystic pages—while unseen flit o'er us
Those venerable forms who went before us.
Perchance e'en now their consecrated shades
Are gazing through the silence that pervades
This festive hour: they come with smiles serene,
Beaming like holy moonlight o'er the scene:—
They come, with high and peaceful brows all bright,
And crowned with wreaths of amaranthine light:
They have no sorrows now: they've won at last
A home whose peace no shadow can o'ercast,
Where far beyond the cold wave, and the tomb,
They dwell in bowers of eternal bloom.
We tread on hallowed soil. Where now we stand,
Two hundred years ago, a feeble band
Safe from the tyrant's chains, the ocean's foam,
Came to these shores to find another home:
A home—not such as that they left behind—
A home—not such as we their children find.
Like the old patriarch of the Orient
They roamed, unknowing whither 'twas they went.
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No harvests waving in the summer wind,
No smiling cottages—no tall white spires
Sprang to the gaze of those old Pilgrim sires.
Wild and unbroken in their long repose
Forests and rocks in endless prospect rose:
All grim and silent slept each granite hill,
Where now the clanking chisel and the drill
Loosen and shape to symmetry the block,
Hewn from the heart of the deep-bedded rock.
Around them dashed the waves;—the moaning breeze
Swept the untrodden depths of the forest trees;
Then rang the woodman's axe with steady stroke,
Till crashing fell the tall centennial oak:
Or leaping out with yell and arrow-twang,
The ambushed savage sudden on them sprang,
Till frightened by the startling musket's crack,
He vanished to his wildernesses back:—
Few sounds, few sights but these,—where now the bell
Rings out its Sabbath chime o'er hill and dell,
And Art hath nestled upon Nature's breast,
Like the young infant in its evening rest.
Hard was their lot. What boots it now to tell
The stern and various trials which befell?
They trod no flowery walks to wealth and fame,
They toiled, endured, and died—with scarce a name.
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A ruthless foe, peril and nakedness;—
Such was their life—and o'er their frozen graves
Swept the wild winter snow, or beat the surging waves!
A stalwart band they were—those settlers grave:—
'Twas not for power and wealth they crossed the wave;
'Twas not to hide like wood-flowers in the shade,
That they amid these forests toiled and prayed.
They were stanch hands that tilled that rocky sod,
Bold, iron hearts that feared no power but God;
A band of daring, much-enduring men,
Awed by no warrior's sword, or statesman's pen;
Bold and resistless as the billows' dash,
But firm and patient as the shore they lash.
No mines of gold, no power, no office fat,
No boyish sighings for a general's hat,
No vision of wild lands and mushroom wealth,
No whims dyspeptic about air and health,
No Eldorado shining o'er the seas
Tempted their barks to steer for shores like these.
It seems reserved for our enlightened days,
To see the folly of our fathers' ways;
Those tedious modes of settling we've outran,
We modern pilgrims know a simpler plan.
We emigrate to wilderness dreary,
For what? Because of staying still we're weary;
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With this one noble purpose—to make money.
We go to speculate—not till the sod;
We go to worship Mammon and not God.
Some of us migrate, lest the law should vex us,
And go by night—to Iowa or Texas;
While some, with silent scorn for jails and halters,
March proudly off, before they're found defaulters.
I've seen all sorts of pilgrims in the west,
The oddest, wildest, laziest, and the best;
From those who go to raise the wind, or work,
To those who roam with Bowie knife and dirk:
Thus none can prophesy the coming weather—
For wheat and tares seem growing there together.
Not so those Pilgrims of the olden time;
No lust of sudden wealth—no haunting crime
Pursued them from their home; they came to seek
A safe asylum, where to think and speak
The deep convictions of their minds was deemed
No sin—and where a purer spirit streamed
Brightening the souls of men, than they had found
In the corrupted courts on English ground.
Dishonored be the attempt, in later days,
To rob the Pilgrim of that well-earned praise,
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The genius that inspired him to a base
And grasping thirst for power. O tell it not,
When speaking of the sternness of their lot
In future times, that our forefathers sought
These cold, inhospitable coasts for aught
But Truth and Freedom! What if they abused
At times this sacred treasure, nor refused
To look on difference of faith as crime?
'Twas but the general error of the time;
Few saw above it—few had reached the creed,
That all good men are Christ's, in truth and deed.
'Twas no ambitious spirit that inspired
Those ocean-drifted exiles;—they desired
No other ends than to possess in peace
A quiet home, just laws, and a release
From the oppressions of their mother-clime.
They knew no meaner hope. A faith sublime
In the deep might of Truth—a patient trust
In God, though he should bow them to the dust,
And above all, the thought that they were free,—
Such was the spirit strong which winged them o'er the sea.
The New York Review (of Jan. 1840, I think,) contains an article on the Politics of the Pilgrims, the leading idea in which is, that the sole end of the Puritan emigration and settlement in this country was to gain political power, and not to enjoy religious liberty.
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;—
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And weave themselves amid my humble rhyme.
HYMN OF THE PILGRIMS.
1.
Hear us, almighty Father!No light but thy great eye above us shines!
Darker and darker gather
The shades of twilight through the moaning pines—
Hear while we pray!
2.
Hear, us, thou great Jehovah!When, wandering through the tangled wilderness,
Cloud after cloud goes over,
Forsake us not in our loneliness!
Shield us to-night!
3.
Guard us from every danger,Thou, who hast ever been our sun and shield,
When trials deeper and stranger
Swept o'er us, as the wind sweeps o'er the field!
O guard us still!
4.
From the wild foeman's arrow—From the dread pestilence that walks unseen—
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And more than all, from hearts and lips unclean,
Save us, O God!
5.
And unto thee, great Spirit,All that we are and have would we commit;—
Not for thy children's merit,
But through thy own free grace, so clearly writ,
Keep us, we pray!
And felt they not that He was ever near?
They were not all alone—for God was there.
And whispered peace amid their fervent prayer.—
He who dwells not in temples made with hands,
But in the heart that yields to His commands,
Shone round about them—and the Spirit's ray
Turned all their darkest midnights into day.
Yet soon a different scene is painted there;—
Hark! those are not the sounds of work and prayer!
What! are the Pilgrims dancing! can it be
That the stern Puritans make all this glee!
Are these who trowl the merry catch the same
Forlorn and pious-visaged men, who came
Seeking a resting place—a shrine for prayer!
Hark, how their noise ascends the evening air!
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Is this the way they pass their days and nights!
List to the song of Morton's jovial crew,
While with light feet they dance away the dew.
For an account of Thomas Morton, and the revelries of Merry-Mount (now Mount Wollaston in the town of Quincy), see Whitney's History of Quincy—and the authorities he consults. Nathaniel Hawthorne's beautiful Legend of Merry-Mount, in his Twice told Tale, will be recalled to many minds.
SONG OF THE REVELLERS.
1.
On with your dances free!Raise, raise the merry glee,
Drain the full cup to me,
Turn night to day!
Who cares for rigid laws?
Who minds the parson's saws?
Who heeds the bailiff's claws?
Let us be gay!
2.
Ring out the festive strain!Hence with all care and pain,
Pledge me the bowl again,
Fill, brothers, fill!
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Trowl me the merry stave!
Look not so sad and grave!
We'll have our will.
3.
Down with your church and creed!Ours is the faith indeed—
Ours is the life to lead—
Live while you may!
Tread we a measure then,
Fill the round bowl again,
We are true Englishmen
Gallant and gay!
4.
Fear not the church's ban,Fear not the Puritan—
Fear not the ‘salvage man,’
Let us be brave!
Then by some sparkling fount,
When we our joys recount,
We'll talk of Merry-Mount
By the blue wave!
To sweep these gilded drones from out their land;
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This idle life—this midnight revelry.
An odd disorganizer was the man,
Who led to scenes like these this sober clan—
He looked on men as boys just out of school—
The “law—their schoolmaster,” he called a fool:
His mode of schooling did not seem to suit—
Indians he taught, not “young ideas,” to shoot.
All things, in fine, seemed going fast to ruin,
Until their neighbors saw the evil brewing—
They caught the sheepskinned wolf who caused these pranks,
And sent him back to England—and gave thanks.
So when they'd stilled the bacchanalian roar,
Mount Wollaston was Merry-Mount no more,
And other settlers came of graver frame,
Until the spot and town received a name.
Morton seems to have been one of the first of the settlers, who supplied the Indians with firearms, and instructed them in the Christian art of shooting men.
The stream of history from its early source.
I need not chronicle the immortal names,
The noble deeds and yet more noble aims,
Which shed the lustre of their deathless glory
Not o'er this spot alone—but through the story,
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Long as our rocks are wet by ocean's brine.
But while our thoughts are gathering brilliant dreams
From the dim Past and its exhaustless themes,
Let us look round us and before, to see
What we now are—and what we yet must be.
Our fathers left to us this legacy—
And wrote it with their blood—all men are free.
All men are free.—They heard these words resound,
Long ere their footsteps trod this hallowed ground:
They heard it like the voice of God within,
When priests and tyrants threatened, and the din
Of persecution roared:—they heard it when
They lay like Daniel in the British Lion's den.
They heard it in the everlasting roar
Of the wild sea that drove them to this shore;
They heard it in the thunder and the wind,
And in the voices deep and undefined,
Which spoke within their hearts, like visions bright,
Calling them to obey the inner light.
This was their gospel writ on flower and star,
This was their creed in peace, their strength in war.
It was the beacon-light to guide them on
To truths, which after times have seen and won.
It was their cherished faith—their joy—their pride:
With this they lived and toiled—for this they died.
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The God-lit fire of the blazing bush!
And with a little shaking of the head
To put the world like a cross child to bed;—
To trample out like sparks the waking mind,
And quench its aspirations unconfined;—
Who seeks by chains, or frowns, or ridicule
To send back full-grown truth to an infant school;
When God says to the times—“Let there be Light!”
Where skulks the man who prays it may be night?
Let him appear—this dweller with the dead!
No—let him bury his diminished head,
Live with the bats, or burrow with the moles,
Nor taint the air which breathes on freeborn souls!
Vain hope! to hide the coming of a truth,
And kindle worn-out dogmas into youth.
Go quench the stars!—go stop the rivers' flow!
Say to the sea, “thus far, no farther go!”
Or on some height, when day begins to break,
A brimstone match, a pile of faggots take,
And ere the Daystar in the east hath shone,
Make thee a little fire of thine own—
Fall down and worship it—then turn and say
To the great Sun—“Sun, I command thee, stay
Go back, thou morning, lest thy coming bright,
Should mar this fire, the true and only light!”
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Who lets his soul to a base bigot clan;
Who, be he politician, priest, or pope,
Sneers at Humanity's undying hope;
Sets traps to kill all thoughts of untried wing,
As some base sportsmen kill young birds in Spring;
Who sees no truth or good but in the past,
And trembles lest the world move on too fast—
And all who differ from himself miscalls
As mystics, infidels, or radicals.
If such in our free land and age there be,
No friend of truth and liberty is he:
He comes an age too late: let him go back,
Dwell with the monks, and ply the stake and rack.
No, let us guard the birthright of our sires.
Quench not the living spirit which aspires
After perfection;—let our fathers' tombs
Be the rich soil on which our Progress blooms.
He that is free must grow. That which we have
Is but a mote compared to what we crave.
Forever onward must the spirit soar,
And fold its shining pinions never more!
With a firm faith in freedom, goodness, truth,
And in the soul's undying power and youth,
Discarding bigotry and foolish pride,
Receiving fresh ideas from every side.
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And living in the truth our souls have caught,
Let us pursue the path our fathers marked,
And finish the great course on which their souls embarked.
For there are times when the awakening mind,
Rapt in itself with visions undefined,
Longing for light, and yet unreconciled
To the old creed its earlier years beguiled,
Looks with unsated eye into the past,
While dreams of surer truths come thronging fast;
And mounted on the knowledge it hath won—
Yet, like the Grecian conqueror, sighs to run
Another race, and gain another world—
Or like the Genoese, with sails unfurled,
Seeks o'er the boundless ocean of its thought
A land of truth scarce known, though often sought.
Then Persecution reigns—then frowns and sneers,
All bitter sarcasms, and all merry jeers,
The withering reproach—the slander vile—
The hot anathema—the icy smile—
The jail, the axe, the rack, the poison bowl,
Death for the body—curses for the soul;
These are thy playthings—these thy livery,
Thy noble badge—spirit of Bigotry!
Thou spectre hag! who, in the holy name
Of truth and dear Religion, hast with flame
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Who turnest Eden to a wilderness!
Thou who dost choke the fountains with the blood
Of saints and sages—blackening Truth and Good
With the eclipse of Hell!—that strikest down
With thy envenomed breath and withering frown
All white-winged aspirations, and uprearest
Instead of them dire dreams which thou e'en fearest;
O dread unhallowed Spirit! would that we,
In this green land, might be unscathed by thee!
Would that the blighting shadow of thy wings
Might ne'er have touched the soil where Freedom springs.
Alas—thy fiery cup was poured o'er all,
And the wide world hath been thy powerless thrall!
Yet may we hope that the enchanter's rod
Hath lightly touched the land the Pilgrim trod—
Here where no tyrant yet hath set his foot,
No Upas tree of vice yet struck its root,
Where o'er each ship that wings yon deep blue sea
Wave the proud stars and stripes of Liberty;—
Where from the meanest drudge that scours the street
Up to the ruler on his velvet seat,
One voice, one common hope inspires each breast,
Here may thy feet, O exiled Freedom, rest.
Light must still come. 'Tis but our dawning hour—
The drowsy soul must feel its godlike power.
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Must thou, America, pollute thy name,
And while the daybreak gleams around thee, steep
Thy freeborn youth in enervating sleep.
'Twas not for this our venerated sires
Tilled the bleak wilds, and marched through battle fire:
When war's wild night with whirlwind fury roared,
When those brave hearts their blood so freely poured,
It was not that their children then unborn
Should doze away in dreams this peaceful morn.
But by their cruel stripes while we are healed,
Let us receive the light from them concealed;
Shame on us, if we think the task is wrought,
And the goal won, which they so fondly sought.
The scholar, priest, and statesman still must see
More truth and freedom for the true and free.
Truth that outlives all visionary dreams,—
Freedom which is—and not which only seems—
And both illumined by the Light above,
And sanctified by the great law of Love;
When man meets man no more with tyrant's rod,
The brother of his race—the child of God.
And ye, bright spirits of Columbia's sires,
Ere like Elijah, rapt in heavenward fires,
Ye have quite vanished from your children's gaze,
Borne on bright chariots through “the sapphire blaze,”
Drop your inspired mantles ere ye go,
Upon your sons who linger still below!
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Which bears ye upward to your blest abode.
We need, alas! the wisdom and the might
Which touched your prophet-souls with heavenly light.
Not for the flashing sword and rolling drum,
Not for the withering spell, when kings sat dumb
Before your trumpet-blast and thunder-stroke,
Do we your presence and your power invoke;
But for the milder spirit which impelled
To labors still severer, and upheld
Patriot and sage to do and suffer all,
Rather than live a priest's or despot's thrall;—
For the great hope which gleamed on ye afar,
In patient thought, as in the storm of war—
For truth, for holiness, for liberty—
These are the gifts for which we turn to ye!
Thus while we view with undiverted eyes
The vistas of the past and future rise,
O deep but trembling are our hopes of thee,
America, thou clime of Liberty!
We fondly ask—while o'er thy rich expanse
The crowds move on, “shall truth with them advance?
While wealth increases, shall the mind increase?
Shall war be banished by the smile of peace?
Shall man be false to man? shall love of gain
Fix in thy soul its desolating reign?
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Vice rove unpunished, passions have their will?
Shall truth be fettered, and her pleadings spurned.
And sweet Religion to a lie be turned?”
Soul of my Country! if thou art not hid
From thine own eyes, arouse thee and forbid
A prophecy so dark! Wake in thy might,
And o'er thy youthful beauty wear the bright
And spotless robe of holiness divine,
That the whole world may see no brighter land than thine!
Here may the Faith, which other times denied,
For which lone sages toiled and martyrs died,
Be sought and valued as the purest gem,
That sparkles on thy ample diadem.
Here may the Hope, so long but feebly cherished
In other lands, till it hath well nigh perished,
Light up the heart of man with strength divine,
Until another golden age shall shine.
Here may that Charity that never faileth,—
That love of man which over all prevaileth,
Be to each soul the fixed and central sun,—
The smile of God, the boon denied to none—
The eye of heaven, the sweet expanding light,
The cloud by day, the shaft of fire by night!
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Each flowery valley and each wild green hill,
When wealth hath purchased wisdom—when thy soil
Lies all in bloom beneath the hand of toil,—
When the bright chain of love, that God hath given,
Extends from heart to heart, and thence to Heaven —
And all that souls prophetic dream of thee
Is ripening in the smile of Liberty—
O then, American, thy name shall shine
Written in glory by a hand divine;
No blight upon thy beauty, not a shade
To dim the robes in which thou art arrayed;
For He, who guided thee through storm and night,
Shall be to thee an Everlasting Light.
| A poem delivered in the first congregational church in the town of Quincy, May 25, 1840 | |