Nathaniel Hawthorne

Name: The Canterbury Pilgrims
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Summary

“The Canterbury Pilgrims”, published in 1851, is a work by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It explores elements such as Shaker, Miriam and Josiah.

Quotes from The Canterbury Pilgrims (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ Then the Canterbury pilgrims went up the hill, while the poet chanted a drear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp, fitting music for that melancholy band. They sought a home where all former ties of nature or society would be sundered, and all old distinctions levelled, and a cold and passionless security be substituted for mortal hope and fear, as in that other refuge of the world's weary outcasts, the grave. The lovers drank at the Shaker spring, and then, with chastened hopes, but more confiding affections, went on to mingle in an untried life. ”

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close to me?"
"But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.
The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact, seem altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart from each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the tops of a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, a party of travellers, who had come wearily up the long ascent, made a halt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, a woman, and a little girl and boy. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims, one so different from the poet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceived of him, began to relate his sad experience. He was a small man, of quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old, with a narrow forehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He held in his hand a pencil, and a card of some commission-merchant in foreign parts, on the back of which, for there was light enough to read or write by, he seemed ready to figure out a calculation. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ At any rate, you have the advice and example of one individual to warn you back; for I am come hither, a disappointed man, flinging aside the fragments of my hopes, and seeking shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxious to leave."
"I thank thee, friend," rejoined the youth, "but I do not mean to be a poet, nor, Heaven be praised! do I think Miriam ever made a varse in her life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But, Miriam," he added, with real concern, "thee knowest that the elders admit nobody that has not a gift to be useful. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ O Fate! why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and more perfect gifts to the ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice of song, when the world lacks the ear of taste? How can I rejoice in my strength and delicacy of feeling, when they have but made great sorrows out of little ones? ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ If you and your sweetheart marry, you'll be kind and pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that's the case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he'll grow gloomy, rough, and hard to please, and you'll be peevish, and full of little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside, when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so your love will wear away by little and little, and leave you miserable at last. It has been so with us; and yet my husband and I were true lovers once, if ever two young folks were. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ And ye know that we do not transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the elders themselves, have a right to hinder us."
"Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking," remarked one of the travellers.
"Yea, ye-a," said Josiah, reluctantly, "because father Job is a very awful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but little charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh."
"Well," said the stranger, "we will neither use force to bring you back to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ At that moment, when they stood on the utmost verge of married life, one word fitly spoken, or perhaps one peculiar look, had they had mutual confidence enough to reciprocate it, might have renewed all their old feelings, and sent them back, resolved to sustain each other amid the struggles of the world. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ We had two more, but God has provided better for them than we could, by taking them to Himself."
"And what would thee advise Josiah and me to do?" asked Miriam, this being the first question which she had put to either of the strangers.
" 'Tis a thing almost against nature for a woman to try to part true lovers," answered the yeoman's wife, after a pause ”

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Source: Wikisource

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Canterbury Pilgrims (1851)

“ Just then, also, the children, roused by their mother's voice, looked up, and added their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the Canterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled.
"We are tired and hungry!" cried they. "Is it far to the Shaker village?"
The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other's eyes. They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes, when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a parable ”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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