John Greenleaf Whittier

“ A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank
And weaves her net for thee.
"She weaves her golden hair; she sings
Her spell-song low and faint;
The wickedest witch in Salem jail
Is to that girl a saint."
"Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue;
God knows," the young man cried,
"He never made a whiter soul
Than hers by Wenham side.
"She tends her mother sick and blind,
And every want supplies;
To her above the blessed Book
She lends her soft blue eyes.
"Her voice is glad with holy songs,
Her lips are sweet with prayer;
Go where you will, in ten miles round
Is none more good and fair." ”

“ The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer,
And quoted Horace o'er her home brewed beer,
Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear.
In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave,
He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gave
Food to the poor and shelter to the slave.
For all too soon the New World's scandal shamed
The righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed,
And men withheld the human rights they claimed. ”

“ I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught,
Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,
Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone,
Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.
The garland which his meekness never sought
I bring him; over fields of harvest sown
With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown,
I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.
. . . . . . . . . .
Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day
From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away,
Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay
Along the wedded rivers. ”

“ The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by different means, have not been equally fortunate. The power of their testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by what Milton calls "the unresistible might of meekness," has been felt through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor and suffering,—felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. But of the men themselves, with the single exception of William Penn, scarcely anything is known. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shone like a jewel on a scimitar,
Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep,
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep.
All else was still. The oxen from their ploughs
Rested at last, and from their long day's browse
Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows.
And the young city, round whose virgin zone
The rivers like two mighty arms were thrown,
Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone,
Lay in the distance, lovely even then
With its fair women and its stately men
Gracing the forest court of William Penn,
Urban yet sylvan ”

“ And the first-fruits of pear and apple, bending
The young boughs down, their gold and russet blending,
Made glad his heart, familiar odors lending
To the fresh fragrance of the birch and pine,
Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine,
And all the subtle scents the woods combine.
Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm,
Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm,
Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm
To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel
Of labor, winding off from memory's reel
A golden thread of music. ”

“ The strength of the other was the witness in the human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to every man; a Light which each was to follow, and which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than the worn ways of cathedral-aisles." It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted nothing beyond a study of the life and times of the Pennsylvania colonist,—a simple picture of a noteworthy man and his locality. ”

“ At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall
shine,
While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink
the blood-red wine."
Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face
to face;
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip
found place.
Back from her low white forehead the curls of
gold she threw,
And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and
blue.
"I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight;
I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn
to slight.
If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not
a lord ”

“ Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea!
"Answer at last the patient prayers of them
Who now, by faith alone, behold its stem
Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's diadem.
"Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and wait,
Remains for us. The wrong indeed is great,
But love and patience conquer soon or late."
"Well hast thou said, my Anna!" Tenderer
Than youth's caress upon the head of her
Pastorius laid his hand. "Shall we demur
"Because the vision tarrieth? ”

“ 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 ”

“ And in its place will swing the scythe and mow
your father's hay."
"Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can
never bear;
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you
must wear."
"Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the rider
gayly spoke,
"And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet
cloak."
"But mark," she said, "no stately horse my peasant
love must ride,
A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he
must guide."
The knight looked down upon his steed: "Well,
let him wander free
No other man must ride the horse that has been
backed by me. ”

“ Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen
talk,
If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk."
"You must take from out your cellar cask of wine
and flask and can;
The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant. ”

“ It is a bold and direct appeal to the best instincts of the heart. "Have not," he asks, "these negroes as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?" Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the German-town settlement grew and prospered. The inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards, and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of their old home. A large number of them were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. The Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all religions were tolerated, and lived together in harmony. ”

“ Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun
Set, leaving still the weightier work undone.
"Help, for the good man faileth! Who is strong,
If these be weak? Who shall rebuke the wrong,
If these consent? How long, O Lord! how long!"
He ceased; and, bound in spirit with the bound,
With folded arms, and eyes that sought the ground,
Walked musingly his little garden round. ”

“ The colors of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare and tumult of the present time, such a picture will find favor may well be questioned. ”

“ In 1692 Richard Frame published, in what he called verse, a Description of Pennsylvania, in which he alludes to the settlement:—
"The German town of which I spoke before,
Which is at least in length one mile or more,
Where lives High German people and Low Dutch,
Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much,
—There grows the flax, as also you may know
That from the same they do divide the tow.
Their trade suits well their habitation,
We find convenience for their occupation." ”

“ Nothing but common-place offices of civility came to pass between them and the Indians; indeed, their enemies taunted them with the fact that the savages did not regard them as Christians, but just such men as themselves. Yet it must be apparent to every careful observer of the progress of American civilization that its two principal currents had their sources in the entirely opposite directions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. ”

“ The historical forces, with which no others may be compared in their influence on the people, have been those of the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of the one was in the confession of an invisible Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would establish righteousness on earth; and thence arose the conviction of a direct personal responsibility, which could be tempted by no external splendor and could be shaken by no internal agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred. ”

“ Green calm below, blue quietness above,
Still flow of water, deep repose of wood ”

“ Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. ”

“ In this circle originated the Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at, Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity. ”

“ In 1683, in company with a small number of German Friends, he emigrated to America, settling upon the Frankfort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers. The township was divided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown, Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen. Soon after his arrival he united himself with the Society of Friends, and became one of its most able and devoted members, as well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the settlement. ”

“ Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras."
Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to whose papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that able periodical the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, I am indebted for many of the foregoing facts in regard to the German pilgrims of the New World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius:— "No tombstone, not even a record of burial, indicates where his remains have found their last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to associate the homage due to this distinguished man with some visible memento can not be gratified. ”

“ THE KING'S MISSIVE. 1661.
This ballad, originally written for The Memorial History of Boston, describes, with pardonable poetic license, a memorable incident in the annals of the city. The interview between Shattuck and the Governor took place, I have since learned, in the residence of the latter, and not in the Council Chamber. The publication of the ballad led to some discussion as to the historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or alter the lines and colors. ”