THE MISSION OF THE PILGRIMS.
Pontiff and Prince, your sway
Must crumble from that day.
Before the loftier throne of Heaven,
The band is raised, the pledge is given-
One monarch to obey, one creed to own:
That monarch, God; that creed, His Word alone.
Spread out earth's holiest records here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear.
A zeal like this what pious legends tell!
On kingdoms built
The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell.
But what exploits with theirs shall page
Who rose to bless their kind,
Who left their nation and their age,
Man's spirit to unbind?
Who boundless seas passed o'er
And boldly met, in every path,
Famine, and frost, and heathen wrath,
To dedicate a shore,
Where Piety's meek train might breathe their vow, And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow; Where Liberty's glad race might proudly come, And set up there an everlasting home!
O, many a time it hath been told,
The story of those men of old :
THE MISSION OF THE PILGRIMS.
For this fair Poetry hath wreathed
Her sweetest, purest flower;
For this proud Eloquence hath breathed
His strain of loftiest power:
Devotion, too, hath lingered round
Each spot of consecrated ground,
And hill and valley blessed;
There, where our banished fathers strayed,
There, where they loved, and wept, and prayed,
There, where their ashes rest.
And never may they rest unsung
While Liberty can find a tongue.
Twine, Gratitude, a wreath for them,
More deathless than the diadem,
Who, to life's noblest end,
Gave up life's noblest powers,
And bade the legacy descend,
Down, down to us and ours.
How slow yon tiny vessel ploughs the main!
Amid the heavy billows now she seems
A toiling atom,-then from wave to wave
Leaps madly, by the tempest lashed,—or reels,
Half wrecked, through gulfs profound.
But still that lonely traveller treads the deep.-
I see an icebound coast, toward which she steers
With such a tardy movement, that it seems
Stern Winter's hand hath turned her keel to stone,
And sealed his victory on her slippery shrouds.
They land!—they land!—not like the Genoese,
With glittering sword, and gaudy train, and eye
Kindling with golden fancies. Forth they come
From their long prison-hardy forms, that brave
The world's unkindness-men of hoary hair,
And virgins of firm heart, and matrons grave,
Who hush the wailing infant with a glance.-
Bleak Nature's desolation wraps them round,
Eternal forests, or unyielding earth,
And savage men, who through the thickets peer
With vengeful arrow.-What could lure their steps
To this drear desert ?-Ask of him who left
His father's house to roam through Haran's wilds,
Distrusting not the Guide who called him forth,
Nor doubting, though a stranger, that his seed
Should be as Ocean's sands.
Hath spread her parting sail.
Those few lone pilgrims.- Can ye scan the woe
That wrings their bosoms, as the last frail link,
Binding to man and habitable earth,
Is severed?-Can ye tell what pangs were there,
What keen regrets, what sickness of the heart,
What yearnings o'er their forfeit land of birth,
Their distant dear ones?
They watch the lessening speck. Heard ye no shriek
Of anguish, when that bitter loneliness
Sank down into their bosoms ?-No, they turn
Back to their dreary, famished huts, and pray!-
Pray, and the ills that haunt this transient life
Fade into air.-Up in each girded breast
There sprang a rooted and mysterious strength-
A loftiness-to face a world in arms,-
To strip the pomp from sceptres,—and to lay
Upon the sacred altar the warm blood
Of slain affections, when they rise between
The soul and God.-
And can ye deem it strange
That from their planting such a branch should bloom
As nation's envy ? Would a germ, embalmed
With prayer's pure tear-drops, strike no deeper root
Than that which mad ambition's hand doth strew
Upon the winds, to reap the winds again?
Hid by its veil of waters from the hand
Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth
In giant strength.-
Its early clusters, crushed
In England's wine-press, gave the tyrant host
A draught of deadly wine.-O, ye who boast
In
your
free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart, or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue,—or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach, and on that rock
Kneel in their footprints and renew the vow
They breathed to God.
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