Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420774" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Up and down the village streets<br>Strange are the forms my fancy meets,<br>For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,<br>And through the veil of a closed lid<br>The ancient worthies I see again<br>I hear the tap of the elder's cane,<br>And his awful periwig I see,<br>And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.<br>Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,<br>His black cap hiding his whitened hair,<br>Walks the Judge of the great Assize,<br>Samuel Sewall the good and wise.<br>His face with lines of firmness wrought,<br>He wears the look of a man unbought,<br>Who swears to his hurt and changes not;<br>Yet, touched and softened nevertheless<br>With the grace of Christian gentleness,<br>The face that a child would climb to kiss!<br>True and tender and brave and just,<br>That man might honor and woman trust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Touching and sad, a tale is told,<br>Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,<br>Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to<br>With a haunting sorrow that never slept,<br>As the circling year brought round the time<br>Of an error that left the sting of crime,<br>When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts,<br>With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports,<br>And spake, in the name of both, the word<br>That gave the witch's neck to the cord,<br>And piled the oaken planks that pressed<br>The feeble life from the warlock's breast!<br>All the day long, from dawn to dawn,<br>His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;<br>No foot on his silent threshold trod,<br>No eye looked on him save that of God,<br>As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms<br>Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,<br>And, with precious proofs from the sacred word<br>Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,<br>His faith confirmed and his trust renewed<br>That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,<br>Might be washed away in the mingled flood<br>Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Green forever the memory be<br>Of the Judge of the old Theocracy,<br>Whom even his errors glorified,<br>Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side<br>By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide I<br>Honor and praise to the Puritan<br>Who the halting step of his age outran,<br>And, seeing the infinite worth of man<br>In the priceless gift the Father gave,<br>In the infinite love that stooped to save,<br>Dared not brand his brother a slave<br>'Who doth such wrong,' he was wont to say,<br>In his own quaint, picture-loving way,<br>'Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade<br>Which God shall cast down upon his head!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Widely as heaven and hell, contrast<br>That brave old jurist of the past<br>And the cunning trickster and knave of courts<br>Who the holy features of Truth distorts,<br>Ruling as right the will of the strong,<br>Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;<br>Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak<br>Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek;<br>Scoffing aside at party's nod<br>Order of nature and law of God;<br>For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,<br>Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;<br>Justice of whom 't were vain to seek<br>As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!<br>Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;<br>Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!<br>To the saintly soul of the early day,<br>To the Christian judge, let us turn and say<br>'Praise and thanks for an honest man!-<br>Glory to God for the Puritan!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see, far southward, this quiet day,<br>The hills of Newbury rolling away,<br>With the many tints of the season gay,<br>Dreamily blending in autumn mist<br>Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.<br>Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,<br>Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,<br>A stone's toss over the narrow sound.<br>Inland, as far as the eye can go,<br>The hills curve round like a bended bow;<br>A silver arrow from out them sprung,<br>I see the shine of the Quasycung;<br>And, round and round, over valley and hill,<br>Old roads winding, as old roads will,<br>Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;<br>And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,<br>Through green elm arches and maple leaves,-<br>Old homesteads sacred to all that can<br>Gladden or sadden the heart of man,<br>Over whose thresholds of oak and stone<br>Life and Death have come and gone<br>There pictured tiles in the fireplace show,<br>Great beams sag from the ceiling low,<br>The dresser glitters with polished wares,<br>The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,<br>And the low, broad chimney shows the crack<br>By the earthquake made a century back.<br>Up from their midst springs the village spire<br>With the crest of its cock in the sun afire;<br>Beyond are orchards and planting lands,<br>And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,<br>And, where north and south the coast-lines run,<br>The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see it all like a chart unrolled,<br>But my thoughts are full of the past and old,<br>I hear the tales of my boyhood told;<br>And the shadows and shapes of early days<br>Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,<br>With measured movement and rhythmic chime<br>Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.<br>I think of the old man wise and good<br>Who once on yon misty hillsides stood,<br>(A poet who never measured rhyme,<br>A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)<br>And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,<br>With his boyhood's love, on his native town,<br>Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,<br>His burden of prophecy yet remains,<br>For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind<br>To read in the ear of the musing mind:-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast<br>As God appointed, shall keep its post;<br>As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep<br>Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap;<br>As long as pickerel swift and slim,<br>Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;<br>As long as the annual sea-fowl know<br>Their time to come and their time to go;<br>As long as cattle shall roam at will<br>The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;<br>As long as sheep shall look from the side<br>Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,<br>And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;<br>As long as a wandering pigeon shall search<br>The fields below from his white-oak perch,<br>When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,<br>And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;<br>As long as Nature shall not grow old,<br>Nor drop her work from her doting hold,<br>And her care for the Indian corn forget,<br>And the yellow rows in pairs to set;-<br>So long shall Christians here be born,<br>Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-<br>By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,<br>Shall never a holy ear be lost,<br>But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight,<br>Be sown again in the fields of light!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Island still is purple with plums,<br>Up the river the salmon comes,<br>The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds<br>On hillside berries and marish seeds,-<br>All the beautiful signs remain,<br>From spring-time sowing to autumn rain<br>The good man's vision returns again!<br>And let us hope, as well we can,<br>That the Silent Angel who garners man<br>May find some grain as of old lie found<br>In the human cornfield ripe and sound,<br>And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own<br>The precious seed by the fathers sown!</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>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<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=420774" data-title="The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="Up and down the village streets
Strange are the forms my fancy meets,
For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,
And through the veil of a closed lid
The ancient worthies I see again
I hear the tap of the elder's cane,
And his awful periwig I ..."></div>
</div>
</div>