Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/140

108  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 door-yard 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, in half the languages of man, His “Rusca Apium,” which with bees began, And through the gamut of creation ran.

Or, now and then, the missive of some friend In gray Altorf or storied Nürnberg penned Dropped in upon him like a guest to spend

The night beneath his roof-tree. Mystical The fair Von Merlau spake as waters fall And voices sound in dreams, and yet withal

Human and sweet, as if each far, low tone, Over the roses of her gardens blown Brought the warm sense of beauty all her own.

Wise Spener questioned what his friend could trace Of spiritual influx or of saving grace In the wild natures of the Indian race.

And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to look From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pentateuch, Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook,

To query with him of climatic change, Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range, Of flowers and fruits and simples new and strange.

And thus the Old and New World reached their hands Across the water, and the friendly lands Talked with each other from their severed strands.

Pastorius answered all: while seed and root Sent from his new home grew to flower and fruit Along the Rhine and at the Spessart’s foot;

And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knew Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue, And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew.

No idler he; whoever else might shirk, He set his hand to every honest work,— Farmer and teacher, court and meeting clerk.

Still on the town seal his device is found, Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil ground, With “Vinum, Linum et Textrinum” wound.

One house sufficed for gospel and for law, Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and saw, Assured the good, and held the rest in awe.

Whatever legal maze he wandered through, He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view, And justice always into mercy grew.

No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor jail, Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief grew pale At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail,

The usurer’s grasp released the forfeit land; The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand, And all men took his counsel for command.

Was it caressing air, the brooding love Of tenderer skies than German land knew of, Green calm below, blue quietness above,