STORY OF THE PILGRIMS. 63 And oft their treach'rous foes combine To lay the stranger low, While founding here their commonwealth Though seeming over zealous In things by us deem'd light, They were but duly jealous Of Power usurping Right. To worship here their God in peace From seeds they sowed with weeping, Our richest harvests rise; We still the fruits are reaping Of Pilgrim enterprise. Then grateful we to them will pay The debt of fame we owe, Who planted here the tree of life Two hundred years ago. As comes this period yearly, Around our cheerful fires, We'll think and tell how dearly Our comforts cost our sires. For them we'll wake the votive song, Who fix'd the home of freedom here Two hundred years ago. REV. DR. FLINT. PILGRIM INFLUENCE. WE owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirits' core ; Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-behold ing sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. God works for all. Ye cannot bear the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea. Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill. PILGRIM INFLUENCE. 65 Chain down your slaves with ignorance; ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart. When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The Word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.* JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. * It is a striking fact that the first cargo of African slaves was landed from an English ship at the Virginian Settlement in the year 1620-the very year in which the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Plymouth Bay, New England; so that slavery, as a system, and pilgrim principles were simultaneously planted in American soil, to carry on henceforth an irreconcilable conflict, until one or other of them shall be master of the field. It may temper the first feelings of shame which we, as Englishmen, experience when we reflect that we innoculated our American colonies with the virus of slavery, thrusting it upon some against their just protest, to reflect also that it was Englishmen (though proscribed and expatriated) who introduced into America the principles which must finally destroy slavery there and elsewhere. The operation of those principles have extirpated it in the Northern States, have prevented its blight from resting on the West, and will ultimately compass its destruction in the Southern States, of which the triumph of LINCOLN and HAMLIN, by the suffrages of the whole Union, may be accepted as the omen. It may be interesting to mention that the first Stone of the Memorial Building in Southwark was laid by CYRUS HAMLIN, D.D., first cousin to HAMLIN, the Vice-President Elect of the United States. WE ARE ONE. THOUGH ages long have past Since our fathers left their home, O'er untravelled seas to roam Yet lives the blood of England in our veins : That blood of honest fame, Which no tyranny can tame By its chains? While the language free and bold, Which the bard of Avon sung, In which our Milton told How the vault of heaven rung When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host; While these, with reverence meet, Ten thousand echoes greet, And from rock to rock repeat, Round our coast; While the manners, while the arts, That mould a nation's soul, Still cling around our hearts, Between, let ocean roll, Our joint communion breaking with the sun; Yet still, from either beach, The voice of blood shall reach More audible than speech, We are one. WASHINGTON ALLSTON. THE SONG OF THE DUMB. H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, on the occasion of his recent visit to the DEAF AND DUMB INSTITUTION of New York, was greeted with the following welcome, written by Mrs. Peet, and recited in the sign-language by Miss Gertrude Walter. WELCOME TO THE PRINCE. ONCE from beyond the azure sea There came to us a welcome tone. And soon from out the ocean's depths, Where master minds a CHAIN* had bound, A strong pulsation shook the land, And silence hushed the New World's sound. How breathlessly men stopped to count The throbs that came with measured beat, Till one by one, with trembling joy, The Atlantic telegraphic cable. |