Narrative Poems, part 6, Pennsylvania Pilgrim | Page 5

truth a lie.
His forest home no hermit's cell he found,?Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth around,?And held armed truce upon its neutral ground.
There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung,?Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung,?Pastorius fancied, when the world was young,
Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall,?Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's hall,?Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all.
There hungry folk in homespun drab and gray?Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting day,?Genial, half merry in their friendly way.
Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland,?Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand?The New World's promise, sought his helping hand.
Or painful Kelpius [13] from his hermit den?By Wissahickon, maddest of good men,?Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen.
Deep in the woods, where the small river slid?Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid,?Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,
Reading the books of Daniel and of John,?And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone?Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,
Whereby he read what man ne'er read before,?And saw the visions man shall see no more,?Till the great angel, striding sea and shore,
Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships,?The warning trump of the Apocalypse,?Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.
Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin?Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within,?Aired his perfection in a world of sin.
Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der Graaf?Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff,?Till the red embers broke into a laugh
And dance of flame, as if they fain would cheer?The rugged face, half tender, half austere,?Touched with the pathos of a homesick tear!
Or Sluyter, [14] saintly familist, whose word?As law the Brethren of the Manor heard,?Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord,
And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his race,?Above a wrecked world with complacent face?Riding secure upon his plank of grace!
Haply, from Finland's birchen groves exiled,?Manly in thought, in simple ways a child,?His white hair floating round his visage mild,
The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's door,?Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear once more?His long-disused and half-forgotten lore.
For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse,?And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse?Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse.
And oft Pastorius and the meek old man?Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran,?Ending in Christian love, as they began.
With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayed?Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade?Looked miles away, by every flower delayed,
Or song of bird, happy and free with one?Who loved, like him, to let his memory run?Over old fields of learning, and to sun
Himself in Plato's wise philosophies,?And dream with Philo over mysteries?Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys;
To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly stop?For doubt of truth, but let the buckets drop?Deep down and bring the hidden waters up [15]
For there was freedom in that wakening time?Of tender souls; to differ was not crime;?The varying bells made up the perfect chime.
On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal,?The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole?Through the stained oriel of each human soul.
Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought?His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought?That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught.
One faith alone, so broad that all mankind?Within themselves its secret witness find,?The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind,
The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide,?Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied,?The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside.
As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, [16] face?By face in Flemish detail, we may trace?How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral grace
Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl,?Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl?By skirt of silk and periwig in curl
For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove?Made all men equal, none could rise above?Nor sink below that level of God's love.
So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down,?The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown,?Pastorius to the manners of the town
Added the freedom of the woods, and sought?The bookless wisdom by experience taught,?And learned to love his new-found home, while not
Forgetful of the old; the seasons went?Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent?Of their own calm and measureless content.
Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing?His song of welcome to the Western spring,?And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing.
And when the miracle of autumn came,?And all the woods with many-colored flame?Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame,
Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a sound?Spake to him from each kindled bush around,?And made the strange, new landscape holy ground
And when the bitter north-wind, keen and swift,?Swept the white street and piled the dooryard drift,?He exercised, as Friends might say, his gift
Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the hash?Of corn and beans in Indian succotash;?Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a flash
Of wit and fine conceit,--the good man's play?Of quiet fancies, meet to while away?The slow hours measuring off an idle day.
At evening, while his wife put on her look?Of love's endurance, from its niche he took?The written pages of his ponderous book.
And read,