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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420422" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Spiritual Manifestation</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">To-day the plant by Williams set<br>Its summer bloom discloses;<br>The wilding sweethrier of his prayers<br>Is crowned with cultured roses.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once more the Island State repeats<br>The lesson that he taught her,<br>And binds his pearl of charity<br>Upon her brown-locked daughter.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is 't fancy that he watches still<br>His Providence plantations?<br>That still the careful Founder takes<br>A part on these occasions.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Methinks I see that reverend form,<br>Which all of us so well know<br>He rises up to speak; he jogs<br>The presidential elbow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Good friends,' he says, 'you reap a field<br>I sowed in self-denial,<br>For toleration had its griefs<br>And charity its trial.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,<br>To him must needs be given<br>Who heareth heresy and leaves<br>The heretic to Heaven!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I hear again the snuffled tones,<br>I see in dreary vision<br>Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,<br>And prophets with a mission.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Each zealot thrust before my eyes<br>His Scripture-garbled label;<br>All creeds were shouted in my ears<br>As with the tongues of Babel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied<br>The hope of every other;<br>Each martyr shook his branded fist<br>At the conscience of his brother!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'How cleft the dreary drone of man.<br>The shriller pipe of woman,<br>As Gorton led his saints elect,<br>Who held all things in common!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp,<br>And torn by thorn and thicket,<br>The dancing-girls of Merry Mount<br>Came dragging to my wicket.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears;<br>Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly;<br>And Antinomians, free of law,<br>Whose very sins were holy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists,<br>Of stripes and bondage braggarts,<br>Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched<br>From Puritanic fagots.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And last, not least, the Quakers came,<br>With tongues still sore from burning,<br>The Bay State's dust from off their feet<br>Before my threshold spurning;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'A motley host, the Lord's debris,<br>Faith's odds and ends together;<br>Well might I shrink from guests with lungs<br>Tough as their breeches leather</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'If, when the hangman at their heels<br>Came, rope in hand to catch them,<br>I took the hunted outcasts in,<br>I never sent to fetch them.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I fed, but spared them not a whit;<br>I gave to all who walked in,<br>Not clams and succotash alone,<br>But stronger meat of doctrine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I proved the prophets false, I pricked<br>The bubble of perfection,<br>And clapped upon their inner light<br>The snuffers of election.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And looking backward on my times,<br>This credit I am taking;<br>I kept each sectary's dish apart,<br>No spiritual chowder making.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Where now the blending signs of sect<br>Would puzzle their assorter,<br>The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,<br>The Baptist held the water.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'A common coat now serves for both,<br>The hat's no more a fixture;<br>And which was wet and which was dry,<br>Who knows in such a mixture?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream<br>To bless them all is able;<br>And bird and beast and creeping thing<br>Make clean upon His table!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I walked by my own light; but when<br>The ways of faith divided,<br>Was I to force unwilling feet<br>To tread the path that I did?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I touched the garment-hem of truth,<br>Yet saw not all its splendor;<br>I knew enough of doubt to feel<br>For every conscience tender.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'God left men free of choice, as when<br>His Eden-trees were planted;<br>Because they chose amiss, should I<br>Deny the gift He granted?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'So, with a common sense of need,<br>Our common weakness feeling,<br>I left them with myself to God<br>And His all-gracious dealing!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I kept His plan whose rain and sun<br>To tare and wheat are given;<br>And if the ways to hell were free,<br>I left then free to heaven!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Take heart with us, O man of old,<br>Soul-freedom's brave confessor,<br>So love of God and man wax strong,<br>Let sect and creed be lesser.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The jarring discords of thy day<br>In ours one hymn are swelling;<br>The wandering feet, the severed paths,<br>All seek our Father's dwelling.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And slowly learns the world the truth<br>That makes us all thy debtor,--<br>That holy life is more than rite,<br>And spirit more than letter;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That they who differ pole-wide serve<br>Perchance the common Master,<br>And other sheep He hath than they<br>Who graze one narrow pasture!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For truth's worst foe is he who claims<br>To act as God's avenger,<br>And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,<br>The crystal walls in danger!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who sets for heresy his traps<br>Of verbal quirk and quibble,<br>And weeds the garden of the Lord<br>With Satan's borrowed dibble.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To-day our hearts like organ keys<br>One Master's touch are feeling;<br>The branches of a common Vine<br>Have only leaves of healing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Co-workers, yet from varied fields,<br>We share this restful nooning;<br>The Quaker with the Baptist here<br>Believes in close communing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone,<br>Too light for thy deserving;<br>Thanks for thy generous faith in man,<br>Thy trust in God unswerving.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still echo in the hearts of men<br>The words that thou hast spoken;<br>No forge of hell can weld again<br>The fetters thou hast broken.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The pilgrim needs a pass no more<br>From Roman or Genevan;<br>Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps<br>Henceforth the road to Heaven!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420422" data-title="A Spiritual Manifestation de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="To-day the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.

Once more the Island State repeats
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-loc..."></div>
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