Narrative Poems, part 6, Pennsylvania Pilgrim | Page 7

scars?From every stricken field of England's wars.
Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt?Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt?On his moved lips the seal of silence melt.
Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole?Of a diviner life from soul to soul,?Baptizing in one tender thought the whole.
When shaken hands announced the meeting o'er,?The friendly group still lingered at the door,?Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store
Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth and maid?Down the green vistas of the woodland strayed,?Whispered and smiled and oft their feet delayed.
Did the boy's whistle answer back the thrushes??Did light girl laughter ripple through the bushes,?As brooks make merry over roots and rushes?
Unvexed the sweet air seemed. Without a wound?The ear of silence heard, and every sound?Its place in nature's fine accordance found.
And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood,?Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood?Seemed, like God's new creation, very good!
And, greeting all with quiet smile and word,?Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird?Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirred
At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod;?And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or trod,?He felt the peace of nature and of God.
His social life wore no ascetic form,?He loved all beauty, without fear of harm,?And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm.
Strict to himself, of other men no spy,?He made his own no circuit-judge to try?The freer conscience of his neighbors by.
With love rebuking, by his life alone,?Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown,?The joy of one, who, seeking not his own,
And faithful to all scruples, finds at last?The thorns and shards of duty overpast,?And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast,
Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound,?And flowers upspringing in its narrow round,?And all his days with quiet gladness crowned.
He sang not; but, if sometimes tempted strong,?He hummed what seemed like Altorf's Burschen-song;?His good wife smiled, and did not count it wrong.
For well he loved his boyhood's brother band;?His Memory, while he trod the New World's strand,?A double-ganger walked the Fatherland
If, when on frosty Christmas eves the light?Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed the sight?Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all in white;
And closed his eyes, and listened to the sweet?Old wait-songs sounding down his native street,?And watched again the dancers' mingling feet;
Yet not the less, when once the vision passed,?He held the plain and sober maxims fast?Of the dear Friends with whom his lot was cast.
Still all attuned to nature's melodies,?He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees,?And the low hum of home-returning bees;
The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloom?Down the long street, the beauty and perfume?Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and gloom
Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven through?With sun--threads; and the music the wind drew,?Mournful and sweet, from leaves it overblew.
And evermore, beneath this outward sense,?And through the common sequence of events,?He felt the guiding hand of Providence
Reach out of space. A Voice spake in his ear,?And to all other voices far and near?Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear.
The Light of Life shone round him; one by one?The wandering lights, that all-misleading run,?Went out like candles paling in the sun.
That Light he followed, step by step, where'er?It led, as in the vision of the seer?The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear
And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes?Watching the living splendor sink or rise,?Its will their will, knowing no otherwise.
Within himself he found the law of right,?He walked by faith and not the letter's sight,?And read his Bible by the Inward Light.
And if sometimes the slaves of form and rule,?Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's pool,?Tried the large tolerance of his liberal school,
His door was free to men of every name,?He welcomed all the seeking souls who came,?And no man's faith he made a cause of blame.
But best he loved in leisure hours to see?His own dear Friends sit by him knee to knee,?In social converse, genial, frank, and free.
There sometimes silence (it were hard to tell?Who owned it first) upon the circle fell,?Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spell
On the black boy who grimaced by the hearth,?To solemnize his shining face of mirth;?Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearth
Of sound; nor eye was raised nor hand was stirred?In that soul-sabbath, till at last some word?Of tender counsel or low prayer was heard.
Then guests, who lingered but farewell to say?And take love's message, went their homeward way;?So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's day.
His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold,?A truer idyl than the bards have told?Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old.
Where still the Friends their place of burial keep,?And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep,?The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet sleep.
And Anna's aloe? If it flowered at last?In Bartram's garden, did John Woolman cast?A glance upon it as he meekly passed?
And did a secret sympathy possess?That tender soul, and for the slave's redress?Lend hope, strength,