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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420776" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Quaker Alumni</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,<br>Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;<br>And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,<br>Play over the old game of going to school.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints,<br>(You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!)<br>All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,<br>Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold,<br>Though your 'thee' has grown 'you,' and your drab blue and gold,<br>To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form,<br>Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall;<br>Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all<br>Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear;<br>Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon<br>rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon;<br>They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own,<br>And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame,<br>Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same;<br>Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall,<br>And in death as in life, He is Father of all!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play<br>Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;--<br>Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown,<br>And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad,<br>And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.<br>Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim,<br>And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings,<br>Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings;<br>And we, of all others, have reason to pay<br>The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth;<br>For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth;<br>For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge;<br>For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least<br>Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast,<br>Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail,<br>In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For a womanhood higher and holier, by all<br>Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,--<br>Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play,<br>Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole,<br>Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul,<br>Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run,<br>And man has not severed what God has made one!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere,<br>As sunshine impartial, and free as the air;<br>For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew,<br>And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers,<br>And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years,<br>All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage,<br>In prophet and priest, are our true heritage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Word which the reason of Plato discerned;<br>The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned;<br>The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed,<br>In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No honors of war to our worthies belong;<br>Their plain stem of life never flowered into song;<br>But the fountains they opened still gush by the way,<br>And the world for their healing is better to-day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down<br>To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown,<br>The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned,<br>Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who through the world's pantheon walked in his pride,<br>Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside,<br>And in fiction the pencils of history dipped,<br>To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How vainly he labored to sully with blame<br>The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame!<br>Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind<br>On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the sake of his true-hearted father before him;<br>For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him;<br>For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him,<br>And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are those who take note that our numbers are small,--<br>New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall;<br>But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own,<br>And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The last of the sect to his fathers may go,<br>Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show;<br>But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years,<br>Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the stone,<br>In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on,<br>Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run,<br>And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget<br>To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt?--<br>Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that they wore,<br>And for Barclay's Apology offer one more?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the shears,<br>And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears?<br>Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox?<br>And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Make our preachers war-chaplains? quote Scripture to take<br>The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake?<br>Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir,<br>And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No! the old paths we'll keep until better are shown,<br>Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own;<br>And while 'Lo here' and 'Lo there' the multitude call,<br>Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The good round about us we need not refuse,<br>Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews;<br>But why shirk the badge which our fathers have worn,<br>Or beg the world's pardon for having been born?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We need not pray over the Pharisee's prayer,<br>Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's share;<br>Truth to us and to others is equal and one<br>Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well know we our birthright may serve but to show<br>How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow;<br>But we need not disparage the good which we hold;<br>Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Enough and too much of the sect and the name.<br>What matters our label, so truth be our aim?<br>The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true,<br>And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So the man be a man, let him worship, at will,<br>In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill.<br>When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town<br>For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And this green, favored island, so fresh and seablown,<br>When she counts up the worthies her annals have known,<br>Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect<br>To measure her love, and mete out her respect.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three shades at this moment seem walking her strand,<br>Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his hand,--<br>Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene<br>On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One holy name bearing, no longer they need<br>Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed<br>The new song they sing hath a threefold accord,<br>And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the golden sands run out: occasions like these<br>Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas<br>While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore,<br>They lessen and fade, and we see them no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant thoughts seem<br>Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with his theme.<br>Forgive the light measure whose changes display<br>The sunshine and rain of our brief April day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are moments in life when the lip and the eye<br>Try the question of whether to smile or to cry;<br>And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own<br>The tender in feeling, the playful in tone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls<br>At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,--<br>By courtesy only permitted to lay<br>On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part<br>In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,--<br>On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care,<br>And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Long live the good School! giving out year by year<br>Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear<br>Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth,<br>The living epistles and proof of its worth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In and out let the young life as steadily flow<br>As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go;<br>And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town<br>Remember its honor, and guard its renown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not vainly the gift of its founder was made;<br>Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid<br>The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought<br>Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To Him be the glory forever! We bear<br>To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare.<br>What we lack in our work may He find in our will,<br>And winnow in mercy our good from the ill!</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=420776" data-title="The Quaker Alumni de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
Play over the old game of going to school.

All your strifes and vexations, your whim..."></div>
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