LESSON CXI. Song of the Pilgrims.-UPHAM THE breeze has swelled the whitening sail Homes, and all we loved before. The deep may dash, the winds may blow. From that shore we'll speed us fast. For we would rather never be, O, see what wonders meet our eyes! Here, at length, our feet shall rest, As long as yonder firs* shall spread Shall those cliffs and mountains be Now to the King of kings we'll raise! * Pron. ferz. More loud than sounds the swelling breeze, LESSON CXII. The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.-MRS. HEM'ANS. Written, 1825. THE breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast; And the heavy night hung dark, The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came ;- Not as the flying come, In silence, and in fear : They shook the depths of the desert's gloom 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, There were men with hoary hair Why had they come to wither there, There was woman's fearless eye, There was manhood's brow serenely high, What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas? the spoils of war?- Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod! They have left unstained what there they found-so Freedom to worship God! LESSON CXIII. The Pilgrim Fathers.-ORIGINAL. THE pilgrim fathers where are they? Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day, The mists, that wrapped the pilgrim's sleep, And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep, But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale, The pilgrim exile-sainted name! I Rejoiced, when he came, in the morning's flame, Still lies where he laid his houseless head;— The pilgrim fathers are at rest. When Summer's throned on high, And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed, On that hallowed spot is cast; And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, The pilgrim spirit has not fled: It walks in noon's broad light; And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, 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, LESSON CXIV. Character of the Puritan Fathers of New England.- ONE of the most prominent features, which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppres sion. 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 mhabitants 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 un foreseen. 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 them were as free as they, every whit as free. The principles of the revolution were not the suddenly |