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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419064" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Pilgrim's Fathers</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">ONE righteous word for Law—the common will; <br>One living truth of Faith—God regnant still; <br>One primal test of Freedom—all combined; <br>One sacred Revolution—change of mind; <br>One trust unfailing for the night and need— <br>The tyrant-flower shall cast the freedom-seed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be, <br>From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea— <br>Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship, <br>Hope in each heart and prayer on every lip. <br>They could not live by king-made codes and creeds; <br>They chose the path where every footstep bleeds. <br>Protesting, not rebelling; scorned and banned; <br>Through pains and prisons harried from the land; <br>Through double exile,—till at last they stand <br>Apart from all,—unique, unworldly, true, <br>Selected grain to sow the earth anew; <br>A winnowed part—a saving remnant they; <br>Dreamers who work—adventurers who pray! <br>What vision led them? Can we test their prayers? <br>Who knows they saw no empire in the West? <br>The later Puritans sought land and gold, <br>And all the treasures that the Spaniard told; <br>What line divides the Pilgrims from the rest? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We know them by the exile that was theirs;<br>Their justice, faith, and fortitude attest;<br>And those long years in Holland, when their band<br>Sought humble living in a stranger's land.<br>They saw their England covered with a weed<br>Of flaunting lordship both in court and creed.<br>With helpless hands they watched the error grow,<br>Pride on the top and impotence below;<br>Indulgent nobles, privileged and strong,<br>A haughty crew to whom all rights belong;<br>The bishops arrogant, the courts impure,<br>The rich conspirators against the poor;<br>The peasant scorned, the artisan despised;<br>The all-supporting workers lowest prized.<br>They marked those evils deepen year by year:<br>The pensions grow, the freeholds disappear,<br>Till England meant but monarch, prelate, peer.<br>At last, the Conquest! Now they know the word:<br>The Saxon tenant and the Norman lord!<br>No longer Merrie England: now it meant<br>The payers and the takers of the rent;<br>And rent exacted not from lands alone—<br>All rights and hopes must centre in the throne:<br>Law-tithes for prayer—their souls were not their own!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then o'er the brim the bitter waters welled; <br>The mind protested and the soul rebelled. <br>And yet, how deep the bowl, how slight the flow! <br>A few brave exiles from their country go; <br>A few strong souls whose rich affections cling, <br>Though cursed by clerics, hunted by the king. <br>Their last sad vision on the Grimsby strand <br>Their wives and children kneeling on the sand. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then twelve slow years in Holland—changing years—<br>Strange ways of life—strange voices in their ears;<br>The growing children learning foreign speech;<br>And growing, too, within the heart of each<br>A thought of further exile—of a home<br>In some far land—a home for life and death<br>By their hands built, in equity and faith.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then the preparation—the heart-beat<br>Of wayfarers who may not rest their feet;<br>Their Pastor's blessing—the farewells of some<br>'Who stayed in Leyden. Then the sea's wide blue!—<br>'They sailed,' writ one,' and as they sailed they knew<br>That they were Pilgrims!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">   On the wintry main<br>Grod flings their lives as farmers scatter grain. <br>His breath propels the winged seed afloat; <br>His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat; <br>Before His prompting terrors disappear; <br>He points the way while patient seamen steer; <br>Till port is reached, nor North, nor South, but HERE! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, where the shore was rugged as the waves, <br>'Where frozen nature dumb and leafless lay, <br>And no rich meadows bade the Pilgrims stay, <br>'Was spread the symbol of the life that saves: <br>To conquer first the outer things; to make <br>Their own advantage, unallied, unbound; <br>Their blood the mortar, building from the ground; <br>Their cares the statutes, making all anew; <br>To learn to trust the many, not the few; <br>To bend the mind to discipline; to break <br>The bonds of old convention, and forget <br>The claims and barriers of class; to face <br>A desert land, a strange and hostile race, <br>And conquer both to friendship by the debt <br>That Nature pays to justice, love, and toil. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, on this rock, and on this sterile soil,<br>Began the kingdom not of kings, but men:<br>Began the making of the world again.<br>Here centuries sank, and from the hither brink<br>A new world reached and raised an old-world link,<br>When English hands, by wider vision taught,<br>Threw down the feudal bars the Normans brought,<br>And here revived, in spite of sword and stake,<br>Their ancient freedom of the Wapentake!<br>Here struck the seed—the Pilgrims' roofless town,<br>Where equal rights and equal bonds were set,<br>Where all the people equal-franchised met;<br>Where doom was writ of privilege and crown;<br>Where human breath blew all the idols down;<br>Where crests were nought, where vulture flags were furled,<br>And common men began to own the world!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All praise to others of the vanguard then!<br>To Spain, to France; to Baltimore and Penn;<br>To Jesuit, Quaker,—Puritan and Priest;<br>Their toil be crowned—their honors be increased!<br>We slight no true devotion, steal no fame<br>From other shrines to gild the Pilgrims' name.<br>As time selects, we judge their treasures heaped;<br>Their deep foundations laid; their harvests reaped;<br>Their primal mode of liberty; their rules<br>Of civil right; their churches, courts, and schools;<br>Their freedom's very secret here laid down,—<br>The spring of government is the little town!<br>They knew that streams must follow to a spring;<br>And no stream flows from township to a king.<br>Give praise to others, early-come or late,<br>For love and labor on our ship of state;<br>But this must stand, above all fame and zeal:<br>The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel.<br>On their strong lines we base our social health,—<br>The man—the home—the town—the commonwealth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unconscious builders? Yea: the conscious fail!<br>Design is impotent if Nature frown. <br>No deathless pile has grown from intellect. <br>Immortal things have God for architect, <br>And men are but the granite He lays down. <br>Unconscious? Yea! They thought it might avail <br>To build a gloomy creed about their lives, <br>To shut out all dissent; but naught survives <br>Of their poor structure; and we know to-day <br>Their mission was less pastoral than lay— <br>More Nation-seed than Gospel-seed were they!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Faith was theirs: the time had other needs.<br>The salt they bore must sweeten worldly deeds.<br>There was a meaning in the very wind<br>That blew them here so few, so poor, so strong,<br>To grapple concrete work, not abstract wrong.<br>Their saintly Robinson was left behind<br>To teach by gentle memory; to shame<br>The bigot spirit and the word of flame;<br>To write dear mercy in the Pilgrims' law;<br>To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw,—<br>That no rejected race in darkness delves;<br>There are no Gentiles, but they make themselves;<br>That men are one of blood and one of spirit;<br>That one is as the whole, and all inherit!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On all the story of a life or race, <br>The blessing of a good man leaves its trace. <br>Their Pastor's word at Leyden here sufficed: <br>'But follow me as I have followed Christ!' <br>And, 'I believe there is more truth to come!' <br>O gentle soul, what future age shall sum <br>The sweet incentive of thy tender word! <br>Thy sigh to hear of conquest by the sword: <br>'How happy to convert, and not to slay! ' <br>When valiant Standish killed the chief at bay. <br>To such as thee the Fathers owe their fame; <br>The Nation owes a temple to thy name. <br>Thy teaching made the Pilgrims kindly, free,— <br>All that the later Puritans should be. <br>Thy pious instinct marks their destiny. <br>Thy love won more than force or arts adroit— <br>It writ and kept the deed with Massasoit; <br>It earned the welcome Samoset expressed; <br>It lived again in Eliot's loving breast; <br>It filled the Compact which the Pilgrims signed— <br>Immortal scroll! the first where men combined <br>From one deep lake of common blood to draw <br>All rulers, rights, and potencies of law. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">When waves of ages have their motive spent <br>Thy sermon preaches in this Monument, <br>Where Virtue, Courage, Law, and Learning sit; <br>Calm Faith above them, grasping Holy Writ; <br>White hand upraised o'er beauteous, trusting eyes, <br>And pleading finger pointing to the skies!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The past is theirs—the future ours; and we <br>Must learn and teach. Oh, may our record be <br>Like theirs, a glory, symbolled in a stone, <br>To speak as this speaks, of our labors done. <br>They had no model; but they left us one. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Severe they were; but let him cast the stone <br>Who Christ's dear love dare measure with his own. <br>Their strict professions were not cant nor pride. <br>Who calls them narrow, let his soul be wide! <br>Austere, exclusive—ay, but with their faults, <br>Their golden probity mankind exalts, <br>They never lied in practice, peace, or strife;<br>They were no hypocrites; their faith was clear;<br>They feared too much some sins men ought to fear:<br>The lordly arrogance and avarice,<br>And vain frivolity's besotting vice;<br>The stern enthusiasm of their life<br>Impelled too far, and weighed poor nature down;<br>They missed God's smile, perhaps, to watch His frown.<br>But he who digs for faults shall resurrect<br>Their manly virtues born of self-respect.<br>How sum their merits? They were true and brave;<br>They broke no compact and they owned no slave;<br>They had no servile order, no- dumb throat;<br>They trusted first the universal vote;<br>The first were they to practice and. instill<br>The rule of law and not the rule of will;<br>They lived one noble test: who would be freed<br>Must give up all to follow duty's lead.<br>They made no revolution based on blows,<br>But taught one truth that all the planet knows,<br>That all men think of, looking on a throne—<br>The people may be trusted with their own!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In every land wherever might holds sway <br>The Pilgrims' leaven is at work to-day. <br>The Mayflower's cabin was the chosen womb <br>Of light predestined for the nations' gloom. <br>God grant that those who tend the sacred flame <br>May worthy prove of their Forefathers' name. <br>More light has come,—more dangers, too, perplex: <br>New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex. <br>The Fathers fled from feudal lords,, and made <br>A freehold state; may we not retrograde <br>To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade. <br>May we, as they did, teach in court and school, <br>There must be classes, but no class shall rule: <br>The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool. <br>Though vast the token of our future glory,<br>Though tongue of man hath told not such a story,—<br>Surpassing Plato's dream, More's phantasy,—still we<br>Have no new principles to keep us free.<br>As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,<br>The truths the Fathers taught we need again.<br>Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves,<br>With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,<br>And patch our moral leaks with statute law,<br>We cannot be protected from ourselves!<br>Still must we keep in every stroke and vote<br>The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;<br>Our seal their secret: LIBERTY CAN BE; <br>THE STATE IS FREEDOM IF THE TOWN IS FREE. <br>The death of nations in their work began;<br>They sowed the seed of federated Man.<br>Dead nations were but robber-holds; and we<br>The first battalion of Humanity!<br>All living nations, while our eagles shine,<br>One after one, shall swing into our line;<br>Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide<br>And bloodless order of their regicide;<br>The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand<br>Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O People's Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear; <br>When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know; <br>When artist minds in world-wide symbol show; <br>When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise; <br>When priests on grand cathedral altars praise; <br>When pride and arrogance shall disappear, <br>The Pilgrims' Vision is accomplished here!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Boyle+O%27Reilly">John Boyle O'Reilly</a><div class=q>
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One living truth of Faith—God regnant still; 
One primal test of Freedom—all combined; 
One sacred Revolution—change of mind; 
One trust unfailing for the night and need— 
The tyrant-flower sh..."></div>
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