THE

PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM

HAIL to posterity!
Hail, future men of Germanopolis !

Let the young generations yet to be
Look kindly upon this.

Think how your fathers left their native land,

Dear German-land! O sacred hearths and homes!

And, where the wild beast roams,
In patience planned

New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea,
There undisturbed and free
To live as brothers of one family.
What pains and cares befell,

What trials and what fears, Remember, and wherein we have done well

Follow our footsteps, men of coming years!

Where we have failed to do

Aright, or wisely live,

Be warned by us, the better way pursue, And, knowing we were human, even as you,

Pity us and forgive!

Farewell, Posterity! Farewell, dear Germany! Forevermore farewell!

PRELUDE

I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime And milder speech than those brave men's who brought

To the ice and iron of our winter time A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought

With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.

Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught,

Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,

Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone, Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.

The garland which his meekness never sought

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Yet who shall guess his bitter grief who lends

His life to some great cause, and finds his friends

Shame or betray it for their private ends?

How felt the Master when his chosen strove
In childish folly for their seats above;
And that fond mother, blinded by her love,

Besought him that her sons, beside his throne,

Might sit on either hand? Amidst his own A stranger oft, companionless and lone,

God's priest and prophet stands. The martyr's pain

Is not alone from scourge and cell and chain;

Sharper the pang when, shouting in his train,

His weak disciples by their lives deny The loud hosannas of their daily cry, And make their echo of his truth a lie.

His forest home no hermit's cell he found, Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth

around,

And held armed truce upon its neutral ground.

There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung,

Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung,

Pastorius fancied, when the world was

young,

Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall,

Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's

hall,

Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all.

There hungry folk in homespun drab and gray

Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting day,

Genial, half merry in their friendly way.

Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland, Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand The New World's promise, sought his helping hand.

Or painful Kelpius from his hermit den
By Wissahickon, maddest of good men,
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Peter-

sen.

Deep in the woods, where the small river slid Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid,

Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,

Reading the books of Daniel and of John, And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone

Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,

Whereby he read what man ne'er read before,

And saw the visions man shall see no more, Till the great angel, striding sea and shore,

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, The warning trump of the Apocalypse, Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.

Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within,

Aired his perfection in a world of sin.

Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der Graaf

Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff,

Till the red embers broke into a laugh