An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830 | Page 2

resolved, that faithful band,?To meet fate's rudest shock.?Though anguish rends the father's breast,?For them, his dearest and his best,?With him the waste who trod--?Though tears that freeze, the mother sheds?Upon her children's houseless heads--?The Christian turns to God!
VIII.
In grateful adoration now,?Upon the barren sands they bow.?What tongue of joy e'er woke such prayer,?As bursts in desolation there??What arm of strength e'er wrought such power,?As waits to crown that feeble hour??There into life an infant empire springs!
There falls the iron from the soul;?There liberty's young accents roll,?Up to the King of kings!?To fair creation's farthest bound,?That thrilling summons yet shall sound;?The dreaming nations shall awake,?And to their centre earth's old kingdoms shake.
Pontiff and prince, your sway?Must crumble from that day;?Before the loftier throne of Heaven,?The hand is raised, the pledge is given--?One monarch to obey, one creed to own,?That monarch, God, that creed, His word alone.
IX.
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?In blood and guilt,?The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell--
But what exploit 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?
X.
O many a time it hath been told,?The story of those men of old:?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.
XI.
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.
XII.
By centuries now the glorious hour we mark,?When to these shores they steered their shattered bark;?And still, as other centuries melt away,?Shall other ages come to keep the day.?When we are dust, who gather round this spot,?Our joys, our griefs, our very names forgot,?Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen,?To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green.?Nor here alone their praises shall go round,?Nor here alone their virtues shall abound--?Broad as the empire of the free shall spread,?Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread,?Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue?Hath never through the woods of ages rung,?There, where the eagle's scream and wild wolf's cry?Keep ceaseless day and night through earth and sky,?Even there, in after time, as toil and taste?Go forth in gladness to redeem the waste,?Even there shall rise, as grateful myriads throng,?Faith's holy prayer and freedom's joyful song;?There shall the flame that flashed from yonder ROCK,?Light up the land, till nature's final shock.
XIII.
Yet while by life's endearments crowned,?To mark this day we gather round,?And to our nation's founders raise?The voice of gratitude and praise,?Shall not one line lament that lion race,?For us struck out from sweet creation's face??Alas! alas! for them--those fated bands,?Whose monarch tread was on these broad, green lands;?Our Fathers called them savage--them, whose bread,?In the dark hour, those famished Fathers fed:
We call them savage, we,?Who hail the struggling free,?Of every clime and hue;?We, who would save?The branded slave,?And give him liberty he never knew:
We, who but now have caught the tale,?That turns each listening tyrant pale,?And blessed the winds and waves that bore?The tidings to our kindred shore;?The triumph-tidings pealing from that land,?Where up in arms insulted legions stand;
There, gathering round his bold compeers,?Where He, our own, our welcomed One,?Riper in glory than in years,?Down from his forfeit throne,?A craven monarch hurled,?And spurned him forth, a proverb to the world!
XIV.
We call them savage--O be just!?Their outraged feelings scan;?A voice comes forth, 'tis from the dust--?The savage was a man!?Think ye he loved not? who stood by,?And in his toils took part??Woman was there to bless his eye--?The savage had a heart!?Think ye he prayed not? when on high?He heard the thunders roll,?What bade him look beyond the sky??The savage had a soul!
XV.
I venerate the Pilgrim's cause,?Yet for the red man dare to plead--?We bow to Heaven's recorded laws,?He turned to nature for a creed;?Beneath the pillared dome,?We seek our God in prayer;?Through boundless woods he loved to roam,?And the Great Spirit worshipped there:?But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt;?To one divinity with us he knelt;?Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore,?Bade him defend his violated shore;
He saw the cloud, ordained to grow,?And burst upon his hills in wo;?He saw his people withering by,?Beneath the invader's evil eye;?Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones;
At midnight hour he woke to