Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/135

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the Pilgrim of a softer clime
 * And milder speech than those brave men’s who brought

To the ice and iron of our winter time
 * A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought
 * With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.

Simply, as tits my theme, in homely rhyme
 * 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. One long bar Of purple cloud, on which the evening star 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 homebound 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; in its rough-hewn frames Of oak and pine the dryads held their claims, And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names.

Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain.