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The Pilgrim's Vision

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

In the hour of twilight shadows

The Pilgrim sire looked out;

He thought of the "bloudy Salvages"

That lurked all round about,

Of Wituwamet's pictured knife

And Pecksuot's whooping shout;

For the baby's limbs were feeble,

Though his father's arms were stout.

His home was a freezing cabin,

Too bare for the hungry rat;

Its roof was thatched with ragged grass,

And bald enough of that;

The hole that served for casement

Was glazed with an ancient hat,

And the ice was gently thawing

From the log whereon he sat.

Along the dreary landscape

His eyes went to and fro,

The trees all clad in icicles,

The streams that did not flow;

A sudden thought flashed o'er him, -

A dream of long ago, -

He smote his leathern jerkin,

And murmured, "Even so!"

"Come hither, God-be-Glorified,

And sit upon my knee;

Behold the dream unfolding,

Whereof I spake to thee

By the winter's hearth in Leyden

And on the stormy sea.

True is the dream's beginning, -

So may its ending be!

"I saw in the naked forest

Our scattered remnant cast,

A screen of shivering branches

Between them and the blast;

The snow was falling round them,

The dying fell as fast;

I looked to see them perish,

When lo, the vision passed.

"Again mine eyes were opened; -

The feeble had waxed strong,

The babes had grown to sturdy men,

The remnant was a throng;

By shadowed lake and winding stream,

And all the shores along,

The howling demons quaked to hear

The Christian's godly song.

"They slept, the village fathers,

By river, lake, and shore,

When far adown the steep of Time

The vision rose once more

I saw along the winter snow

A spectral column pour,

And high above their broken ranks

A tattered flag they bore.

"Their Leader rode before them,

Of bearing calm and high,

The light of Heaven's own kindling

Throned in his awful eye;

These were a Nation's champions

Her dread appeal to try.

God for the right! I faltered,

And lo, the train passed by.

"Once more; - the strife is ended,

The solemn issue tried,

The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm

Has helped our Israel's side;

Gray stone and grassy hillock

Tell where our martyrs died,

But peaceful smiles the harvest,

And stainless flows the tide.

"A crash, as when some swollen cloud

Cracks o'er the tangled trees

With side to side, and spar to spar,

Whose smoking decks are these?

I know Saint George's blood-red cross,

Thou Mistress of the Seas,

But what is she whose streaming bars

Roll out before the breeze?

"Ah, well her iron ribs are knit,

Whose thunders strive to quell

The bellowing throats, the blazing lips,

That pealed the Armada's knell!

The mist was cleared, - a wreath of stars

Rose o'er the crimsoned swell,

And, wavering from its haughty peak,

The cross of England fell!

"O trembling Faith! though dark the morn,

A heavenly torch is thine;

While feebler races melt away,

And paler orbs decline,

Still shall the fiery pillar's ray

Along thy pathway shine,

To light the chosen tribe that sought

This Western Palestine.

"I see the living tide roll on;

It crowns with flaming towers

The icy capes of Labrador,

The Spaniard's 'land of flowers'!

It streams beyond the splintered ridge

That parts the northern showers;

From eastern rock to sunset wave

The Continent is ours!"

He ceased, the grim old soldier-saint,

Then softly bent to cheer

The Pilgrim-child, whose wasting face

Was meekly turned to hear;

And drew his toil-worn sleeve across

To brush the manly tear

From cheeks that never changed in woe,

And never blanched in fear.

The weary Pilgrim slumbers,

His resting-place unknown;

His hands were crossed, his lips were closed,

The dust was o'er him strown;

The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf,

Along the sod were blown;

His mound has melted into earth,

His memory lives alone.

So let it live unfading,

The memory of the dead,

Long as the pale anemone

Springs where their tears were shed,

Or, raining in the summer's wind

In flakes of burning red,

The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves

The turf where once they bled!

Yea, when the frowning bulwarks

That guard this holy strand

Have sunk beneath the trampling surge

In beds of sparkling sand,

While in the waste of ocean

One hoary rock shall stand,

Be this its latest legend, -

HERE WAS THE PILGRIM'S LAND!