LESSON CXI.

Song of the Pilgrims.—UPĦAM

Written, 1823.

The breeze has swelled the whitening sail
The blue waves curl beneath the gale,
And, bounding with the wave and wind,
We leave Old England's shores behind:-

Leave behind our native shore,
Homes, and all we loved before.

The deep may dash, the winds may blow,

The storm spread out its wings of wo,
Till sailors' eyes can see a shroud,
Hung in the folds of every cloud;

Still, as long as life shall last,
From that shore we'll speed us fast.

For we would rather never be,
Than dwell where mind cannot be free,
But bows beneath a despot's rod
Even where it seeks to worship God.

Blasts of heaven, onward sweep!
Beaf us o'er the troubled deep!

0, see what wonders meet our eyes !
Another land, and other skies!
Columbian hills have met our view !
Adieu! Old England's shores, adieu !

Here, at length, our feet shall rest,
Hearts be free, and homes be blest.

As long as yonder firs* shall spread
Their green arms o'er the mountain's head, -
As long as yonder cliffs shall stand,
Where join the ocean and the land,

Shall those cliffs, and mountains be
Proud retreats for liberty.

Now to the King of kings we'll raise
The pæ’ăn loud of sacred praise,

More loud than sounds the swelling breeze,
More loud than speak the rolling seas!

Happier lands have met our view!
England's shores, adieu! adieu !

LESSON CXII.

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.-Mrs. Her ans.

Written, 1825.

The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast;
And the woods, against a stormy sky,

Their giant branches tossed ;

Ånd the heavy night hung dark,

The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark

On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,

They, the true-hearted, came ;-
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,

And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,

In silence, and in fear :-
They shook the depths of the desert's gloom

With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea ;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang

To the anthem of the free.

The ocean-eagle soared

From his nest, by the white wave's foam,
And the rocking pines of the forest roared:

This was their welcome home.

There were men with hoary hair

Amidst that pilgrim band:

Why had they come to wither there,

Away from their childhood's land ?

There was woman's fearless eye,

Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow serenely high,

And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar?

Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas? the spoils of warm

They sought a faith's pure shrine.

Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod!
They have left unstained what there they found

Freedom to worship God!

LESSON CXIII.

The Pilgrim Fathers.--ORIGINAL.

Written, 1824.

TAE pilgrim fathers--where are they?

The waves that brought them o'er
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray

As they break along the shore :
Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day,

When the May-Flower moored below,
When the sea around was black with storms,

And white the shore with snow.

The mists, that wrapped the pilgrim's sleep,

Still brood upon the tide ; And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,

To stay its waves of pride.
But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale,

When the heavens looked dark, is gone
As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,

Is seen, and then withdrawn.
The pilgrim exile-sainted name

The hill, whose icy brow

Rejoiced, when he came, in the morning's flame,

In the morning's flame burns now.
And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night

On the hill-side and the sca,
Still lies where he laid his houseless head;

But the pilgrim-where is he?

The pilgrim fathers are at resi.

When Summer's throned on high,
And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed,

Go, stand on the hill where they lie.
The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallowed spot is cast;
And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,
Looks kindly

on that spot last.

The pilgrim spirit has not fled:

It walks in noon's broad light;
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,

With the holy stars, by night.
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,

And shall guard this ice-bound shore,
Till the waves of the bay, where the May-Flower lay,

Shall foam and freeze no more.

LESSON CXIV.

Character of the Puritan Fathers of New England.

GREENWOOD.

One of the most prominent features, which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppression. They seemed born and brought up, for the high and special purpose of showing to the world, that the civil and religious rights of man, the rights of self-government, of conscience and independent thought, are not merely things to be talked of, and woven into theories, but to be adopted with the whole strength and ardour of the mind, and felt in the profoundest recesses of the heart, and carried out into the general life, and made the foundation of practical usefulness, and visible beauty, and true nobility.

Liberty, with them, was an object of too serious desire and stern resolve, to be personified, allegorized and enshrin. ed. They made no goddess of it, as the ancients did ; they had no time nor inclination for such trifling; they felt that liberty was the simple birthright of every human creature ; they called it so; they claimed it as such; they reverenced and held it fast as the unalienable gift of the Creator, which was not to be surrendered to power, nor sold for wages.

It was theirs, as men; without it, they did not esteem themselves men ; more than any other privilege or possession, it was essential to their happiness, for it was essential to their original nature ; and therefore they preferred it above wealth, and ease, and country; and, that they might enjoy and exercise it fully, they forsook houses, and lands, and kindred, their homes, their native soil, and their fathers' graves.

They left all these; they left England, which, whatever it might have been called, was not to them a land of freedom; they launched forth on the pathless ocean, the wide, fathomless ocean, soiled not by the earth beneath, and bounded, all round and above, only by heaven; and it seemed to them like that better and sublimer freedom, which their country knew not, but of which they had the conception and image in their hearts; and, after a toilsome and painful voyage, they came to a hard and wintry coast, unfruitful and desolate, but unguarded and boundless; its calm silence interrupted not the ascent of their prayers ; it had no eyes to watch, no ears to hearken, no tongues to report of them; here again there was an answer to their souls' desire, and tney were satisfied, and gave thanks; they saw that they were free, and the desert smiled.

I am telling an old tale; but it is one which must be told, when we speak of those men. It is to be added, that they transmitted their principles to their children, and that, peopled by such a race, our country was always free. So long as its inhabitants were unmolested by the mother country in the exercise of their important rights, they submitted to the form of English government; but when those rights were invaded, they spurned even the form away.

This act was the revolution, which came of course, and spontaneously, and had nothing in it of the wonderful or unforeseen. The wonder would have been, if it had not occurred. It was indeed a happy and glorious event, but by no means unnatural; and I intend no slight to the revered actors in the revolution, when I assert, that their fathers before therr were as free as they,-every whit as free.

The principles of the revolution were not the suddenly