Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/144

112   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, patience? It were vain to guess.

Nay, were the plant itself but mythical, Set in the fresco of tradition’s wall Like Jotham’s bramble, mattereth not at all.

Enough to know that, through the winter’s frost And summer’s heat, no seed of truth is lost, And every duty pays at last its cost.

For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, God sent the answer to his life-long prayer; The child was born beside the Delaware,

Who, in the power a holy purpose lends, Guided his people unto nobler ends, And left them worthier of the name of Friends.

And lo! the fulness of the time has come, And over all the exile’s Western home, From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom!

And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets blow; But not for thee, Pastorius! Even so The world forgets, but the wise angels know.

, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg, In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg, In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his power, As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower.

Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful squire: “Dar’st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?” “Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me: As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee.”

Loud laughed the king: “To-morrow shall bring another day, When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay.” Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood, Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should.

The gray lark sings o’er Vordingborg, and on the ancient town From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down; The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn, The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter’s horn.

In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins, And, singing with the early birds, her daily task begins. Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower, But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower.

About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight; Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel.

The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm; But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades it with her arm.