CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
In 1492, when he stepped upon the shore of the little Caribbean island of San Salvador, Christopher Columbus ushered in a new age of exploration and settlement the likes of which the world had not ever seen. He also greatly contributed to the providential perspective of American history—a view that asserts the directing hand of Almighty God—through the publication of his Book of Prophesies some ten years later. This short excerpt gives a glimpse of that providential perspective and captures the essence of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea’s extraordinary worldview.
At a very early age I went to sea and have continued navigating until today. The art of sailing is favorable for anyone who wants to pursue knowledge of this world’s secrets. I have already been at this business for forty years. I have sailed all the waters which up to now, have been navigated. I have had dealings and conversation with learned people—clergymen and laymen, Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and with many others of other sects.
I found our Lord very well disposed toward this, my desire, and he gave me the spirit for it. He prospered me in seamanship and supplied me with the necessary tools of astronomy, as well as geometry and arithmetic and ingenuity of manual skill to draw spherical maps which show cities, rivers and mountains, islands and ports—everything in its proper place.
I have seen and put into study to look into all the Scriptures, cosmography, histories, chronicles, philosophy, and other arts, which our Lord has opened to understanding, so that it became clear to me that it was feasible to navigate from here to the Indies; and He unlocked within me the determination to execute the idea. And I came to the Sovereigns of Castile and Aragon with this ardor. All those who heard about my enterprise rejected it with laughter, scoffing at me. Neither the sciences which I mentioned, nor the authoritative citations from them, were of any avail. In only the sovereigns remained faith and constancy. Who doubts that this illumination was from the Holy Spirit? I attest that He, with marvelous rays of light, consoled me through the holy and sacred Scriptures, a strong and clear testimony, with forty four books of the Old Testament, and four Gospels with twenty three Epistles of those blessed Apostles, encouraging me to proceed, and, continually, without ceasing for a moment, they inflame me with a sense of great urgency.
Our Lord wished to perform the clearest work of providence in this matter—the voyage to the Indies—to console me and others in this matter of the Holy Temple: I have spent seven years in the royal court arguing the case with many persons of such authority and learned in all the arts, and in the end they concluded that all was idle nonsense, and with this they gave up the enterprise; yet the outcome was to be the fulfillment of what our Redeemer Jesus Christ said beforehand through the mouth of the prophets.
And so the prophesy has been made manifest.
* * *
ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE
From the time of the earliest explorations of the Norse along Ultima Thule and the Spanish in the Caribbean to the settlements of the pioneers in Virginia and Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Americans have always been proud of their courageous heritage and lineage. In this popular nineteenth-century verse, that unique legacy is celebrated.
Oh, who has not heard of the Northmen of yore,
How flew, like the sea-bird, their sails from the shore;
How, westward, they stayed not till, breasting the brine,
They hailed Narragansett, the land of the vine!
Then the war-songs of Rollo, his pennon and glaive,
Were heard as they danced by the moon-lighted wave,
And their golden-haired wives bore them sons of the soil,
While raged with the redskins their feud and turmoil.
And who has not seen, ’mid the summer’s gay crowd,
That old pillared tower of their fortalice proud,
How it stands solid proof of the sea chieftains’ reign
Ere came with Columbus those galleys of Spain!
Twas a claim for their kindred: an earnest of sway,
By the stout-hearted Cabot made good in its day;
Of the Cross of St. George, on the Chesapeake’s tide,
Where lovely Virginia arose like a bride.
Came the Pilgrims with Wintrop; and, saint of the West,
Came Robert of Jamestown, the brave and the blest;
Came Smith, the bold rover, and Rolfe—with his ring,
To wed sweet Matoaka, child of a king.
Undaunted they came, every peril to dare,
Of tribes fiercer far than the wolf in his lair;
Of the wild irksome woods, where in ambush they lay;
Of their terror by night and their arrow by day.
And so where our capes cleave the ice of the poles,
Where groves of the orange scent sea-coast and shoals,
Where the froward Atlantic uplifts its last crest,
Where the sun, when he sets, seeks the East from the West;
The clime that from ocean to ocean expands,
The fields to the snowdrifts that stretch from the sands,
The wilds they have conquered of mountain and plain;
Those Pilgrims have made them fair Freedom’s domain.
And the bread of dependence if proudly they spurned,
Twas the soul of their fathers that kindled and burned,
Twas the blood of old Saxon within them that ran;
They held—to be free is the birthright of man.
So oft the old lion, majestic of mane,
sees cubs of his cave breaking loose from his reign;
Unmeet to be his if they braved not his eye,
He gave them the spirit his own to defy.
* * *
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The great critic and editor, James Russell Lowell, wrote a number of poems that bear testimony of the tremendous courage and tenacity of America’s earliest settlers. This particular verse was a favorite during the halcyon days of optimism at the end of the nineteenth century.
Flawless his Heart and tempered to the core
Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning wave,
First left behind him the firm-footed shore,
And, urged by every nerve of sail and oar,
Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave,
Of thought and action the mysterious door,
Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave:
Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun,
And strange stars from beneath the horizon won,
and the dumb ocean pitilessly grave:
High-hearted surely he;
But bolder they who first off-cast
Their moorings from the habitable Past
And ventured chartless on the sea
Of storm-engendering Liberty:
For all earth’s width of waters is a span,
And their convulsed existence mere repose,
Matched with the unstable heart of man,
Shoreless in wants, mist-girt in all it knows,
Open to every wind of sect or clan,
And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows.
* * *
WILLIAM BRADFORD
Drafted and signed on board the Mayflower as that ship approached Cape Cod on November 11, 1620, this compact is regarded as one of the most important documents in American history. It proves the determination of the small group of English separatist Christians to live under a rule of law, based on the consent of the people, and to set up their own civil government. The parchment has long since disappeared—the current text was first printed in London in 1622 in a pamphlet generally known as Mourt’s Relation, which contained extracts from the fledgling colony’s journals and histories. In an oration delivered at Plymouth in 1802, John Quincy Adams declared that it was “perhaps the only instance, in human history, of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.” Thus the Pilgrim Fathers had anticipated the social contract seventy years before John Locke and one hundred forty years before Jean Jacques Rousseau.
In the name of God Amen. We whose names are underwriten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etceteras.
Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politick; for our better ordering, & preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hearof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, Acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the year the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth and of Scotland the fifty fourth, Anno Dominie, 1620.
John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish, John Alden, Samuel Fuller, Christopher Martin, William Mullins, William White, Richard Warren, John Howland, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Tilley, John Tilley, Francis Cooke, Thomas Rogers, John Turner, Francis Eaton, James Chilton, John Crakston, John Billington, Moses Fletcher, John Goodman, Degory Priest, Thomas Tinker, John Rigdale, Edward Fuller, Thomas Williams, Gilbert Winslow, Edmund Margeson, Peter Brown, Richard Britterige, George Soule, Richard Clarke, Richard Gardiner, John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doty, Edward Leister.
* * *
JOHN WINTHROP
In the spring of 1630 eleven small cargo vessels set sail across three thousand perilous miles of ocean. On board were some seven hundred men, women, and children who were risking their very lives to establish a godly, Puritan community on the shores of Massachusetts. John Winthrop, the leader of the group, composed a lay sermon, “A Model of Charity,” during the journey—and which he probably read to the assembled ship’s company. Excerpted here, the sermon expressed his intention to unite his people behind a single purpose, the creation of a due form of government, ecclesiastical as well as civil, so that their community would be a model for the Christian world to emulate. Theirs was to be, he said, a “City upon a Hill.”
God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.
The reasons hereof: first, to hold conformity with the rest of His works, being delighted to show forth the glory of His wisdom in the variety and difference of the Creatures and the glory of His power, in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole, and the glory of His greatness that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great King will have many stewards counting Himself more honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man, then if He did it by His own immediate hand.
Secondly, that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit: first, upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them: so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor, and despised rise up against their superiors, and shake off their yoke; secondly, in the regenerate in exercising His graces in them, as in the grate ones, their love mercy, gentleness, temperance etc., in the poor and inferior sort, their faith patience, obedience etceteras.
Thirdly, that every man might have need of other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bond of brotherly affection; from hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honorable than another or more wealthy etceteras, out of any particular and singular respect to himself but for the glory of his Creator and the common good of the creature, man; Therefore God still reserves the property of these gifts to himself. He calls wealth “His gold and His silver.” He claims their service as His due: “Honor the Lord with thy riches.” All men being thus, by divine providence, ranked into two sorts, rich and poor; under the first, are comprehended all such as are able to live comfortably by their own means duly improved; and all others are poor according to the former distribution. There are two rules whereby we are to walk one towards another: justice and mercy. These are always distinguished in their act and in their object, yet may they both concur in the same subject in such respect; as sometimes there may be an occasion of strewing mercy to a rich man, in some sudden danger of distress, and also doing of mere justice to a poor man in regard of some particular contract. There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another: in both the former respects, the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law or the law of the gospel, to omits the rule of justice as not properly belonging to this purpose otherwise then it may fall into consideration in some particular cases; by the first of these laws man as he was enabled so withal is commanded to love his neighbor as himself. Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law, which concerns our dealings with men. To apply this to the works of mercy this law requires two things: first, that every man afford his help to another in every want or distress; secondly, that he perform this out of the same affection, which makes him careful of his own good according to that of our Savior. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you.” This was practiced by Abraham and Lot in entertaining the Angels and the old man of Gibea.
The law of grace or the gospel hath some difference from the former as in these respects: first, the law of nature was given to man in the estate of innocence; this of the gospel in the estate of regeneracy; secondly, the former propounds one man to another, as the same flesh and image of God, this as a brother in Christ also, and in the communion of the same Spirit and so teacheth us to put a difference between Christians and others. “Do good to all especially to the household of faith.” Upon this ground the Israelites were to put a difference between the brethren of such as were stranger though not of the Canaanites. Thirdly, the law of nature could give no rules for dealing with enemies for all to be considered as friends in the estate of innocence, but the gospel commands love to an enemy. “If thine enemy hunger feed him; love your enemies do good to them that hate you.”
This law of the gospel propounds likewise a difference of seasons and occasions: there is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor as they did in the Apostles times. There is a time also when a Christian—though they give not all yet—must give beyond their ability, as they of Macedonia. Likewise, a community of perils calls for extraordinary liberality and so clothe the community in some special service for the church. Lastly, when there is no other means whereby our Christian brother may be relieved in this distress we must help him beyond our ability, rather than tempt God, in putting him upon help by miraculous or extraordinary means.
This duty of mercy is exercised in the kinds: giving, lending, and forgiving.
What rule shall a man observe in giving in respect of the measure? If the time and occasion be ordinary he is to give out of his abundance—let him lay aside as god hath blessed him. If the time and occasion be extraordinary he must be ruled by them; taking this withal, that then a man cannot likely do too much especially, if he may leave himself and his family under probable means of comfortable subsistence.
Some though, may object, “A man must lay up for posterity, the fathers lay up for posterity and children and he is worse then an Infidel that provideth not for his own.” But it is plain, first that the command is being spoken by way of comparison. It must be meant of the ordinary and usual course of fathers and cannot extend to times and occasions extraordinary. In addition, the Apostle speaks against such as walked inordinately, and it is without question, that he is worse than an infidel who through his own sloth and voluptuousness shall neglect to provide for his family.
Another may object: “The wise man’s eyes are in his head and foreseeth the plague, therefore we must forecast and lay up against evil times when he or his may stand in need of all he can gather.” Yet, this very argument Solomon useth to persuade to liberality: “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou knowest not what evil may come upon the land.” Make you friends of the riches of iniquity; you will ask how this shall be; very well for first, “He that gives to the poor lends to the Lord,” and He will repay him even in this life an hundred fold to him or his. The righteous is ever merciful and lendeth and his seed enjoyeth the blessing; and besides we know what advantage it will be to us in the day of account when many such witnesses shall stand forth for us to witness the improvement of our talent. And I would know of those who plead so much for laying up for time to come, whether they hold that to be. “Lay not up for yourselves Treasures upon Earth.” If they acknowledge it what extent will they allow it; if only to those primitive times let them consider the reason whereupon our Savior grounds it: the first is that they are subject to the moth, the rust the thief; secondly, they will steal away the hearse, where the treasure is there will the heart be also. The reasons are of like force at all times therefore the exhortation must be general and perpetual which applies always in respect of the love and affection to riches and in regard of the things themselves when any special service for the church or particular distress of our brother do call for the use of them; otherwise it is not only lawful but necessary to lay up as Joseph did to have ready upon such occasions, as the Lord—whose stewards we are of them—shall call for them from us: Christ gives us an instance of the first, when He sent His disciples for the ass, and bids them answer the owner thus, “The Lord hath need of him;” so when the Tabernacle was to be built He sends to his people to call for their silver and gold, and yields them no other reason but that it was for His work. When Elisha comes to the widow of Sareptah and finds her preparing to make ready her pittance for herself and family, he bids her first provide for him. He challengeth first God’s parse, which she must give before she can serve her own family. All these teach us that the Lord looks that when He is pleased to call for His right in any thing we have, our own interest we have must stand aside, till His turn be sewed, for the other we need look no further than: “He who hath this worlds goodies and seeth his brother to need, and shuts up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him,” which comes punctually to this conclusion: “If thy brother be in want and thou canst help him, thou needst not make doubt, what thou shouldst do; if thou lovest God, thou must help him.”
What rule must we observe in lending? Thou must observe whether thy brother hath present or probable, or possible means of repaying thee. If there be none of these, thou must give him according to his necessity, rather than lend him as he requires: if he hath present means of repaying the, thou art to look at him, not as an act of mercy, but by way of commerce; wherein thou art to walk by the rule of justice, but, if his means of repaying thee be only probable or possible then is he an object of thy mercy thou must lend him, though there be danger of loosing it: “If any of thy brethren be poor, thou shalt lend him sufficient” that men might not shift off this duty by the apparent hazard, he tells them that though the Year of Jubilee were at hand—when he must remit it, if he were not able to repay it before—yet he must lend him and that cheerfully; it may not grieve thee to give him and because some might object, “Why so I should soon impoverish my self and my family,” he adds with all thy work for our Savior? From him that would borrow of the turn not away.
What rule must we observe in forgiving? Whether thou didst lend by way of commerce or in mercy, if he have nothing to pay thou must forgive him—except in cause where thou hast a surety or a lawful pledge. Every seventh year the creditor was to quits that which he lent to his brother if he were poor as appears: save when there shall be no poor with thee. In all these and like cases Christ was a general rule. “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye the same to them also.”
What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of Community of peril? The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards our selves, and our own right hence it was that in the primitive church, “They sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that that which he possessed was his own.” Likewise, in their return out of the captivity, because the work was grease for the restoring of the church and the danger of enemies was common to all, Nehemiah exhorts the Jews to liberality and readiness in remitting their debts to their brethren, and disposeth liberally of his own to such as wanted and stands not upon his own due, which he might have demanded of them. Thus did some of our forefathers in times of persecution in England, and so did many of the faithful in other churches whereof we keep an honorable remembrance of them, and it is to be observed that both in Scriptures and latter stories of the churches that such as have been most bountiful. To the poor saints especially in these extraordinary times and occasions God hath left them highly commended to posterity, and Zacheus, Cornelius, Dorcas, Bishop Hooper, the Cuttler of Brussells and divers others. Observe again that the Scripture gives no caution to restrain any from being over liberal this way; but all men to the liberal and cheerful practice hereof by the sweetest promises as to instance one for many. “Is not this the fast that I have chosen to loose the bonds of wickedness, to take off the heavy burdens to let the oppressed goe free and to break every yoke, to deal thy bread to the hungry and to bring the poor that wander into thy house, when thou seest the naked to cover them? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall grow speedily, thy righteousness shall goe before God, and the glory of the lord shall embrace thee, then thou shalt call and the lord shall answer thee. If thou power out thy soul to the hungry, then shall thy light spring out in darkens, and the lord shall guide the continually, and satisfy thy soul in draught, and make fat thy bones; thou shalt be like a watered garden, and they shall be of thee that shall build the old west places.” On the contrary most heavy curses are laid upon such as are straightened towards the Lord and his people: “Curse ye Meroshe because they came not to help the Lord.” He who shutteth his ears from hearing the cry of the poor, he shall cry and shall not be heard: “Go ye cursed into everlasting fire. I was hungry and ye fed me not. He that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly.”
The end is to improve our lives to do more service to the Lord the comfort and increase of the body of Christ whereof we are members that our selves and posterity may be the better preserved from the common corruptions of this evil world to serve the Lord and work out our salvation under the power and purity of His holy ordinances.
Now the only way to accomplish this end and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.” For this end we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in one another, make others’ conditions our own rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of his wisdom power goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us—when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: “The lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a “City upon a Hill.” The eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work; we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going.
“Beloved there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another to walk in His ways and to keep His Commandments and His ordinance, and His laws, and the articles of our covenant with Him that we may line and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whether we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it.”
Therefore let us choose life that we, and our seed may live; by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity.
* * *
MARGARET PRESTON
The Mayflower was not the first ship of colonists to arrive in the New World. It was not even the first in the English domains. Yet it retains a place of first importance in the lore and legend of this land. In this romantic verse we catch a glimpse of the faith, resolve, and bold sense of providence that the passengers of that little ship brought with them from across the Atlantic—and that they then endowed upon all those who would follow them.
“Ho, Rose!” quoth the stout Miles Standish,
As he stood on the Mayflower’s deck,
And gazed on the sandy coast-line
That loomed as a misty speck.
On the edge of the distant offing;
See! yonder we have in view
Bartholomew Gosnold’s headlands.’
’Twas in sixteen hundred and two
“That the Concord of Dartmouth anchored
Just there where the beach is broad,
And the merry old captain named it
(Half swamped by the fish)—Cape Cod.
“And so as his mighty ‘headlands’
are scarcely a league away,
What say you to landing, sweetheart,
And having a washing-day?”
“Dear heart”—and the sweet Rose Standish
Looked up with a tear in her eye;
She was back in the flag-stoned kitchen
Where she watched, in the days gone by:
Her mother among her maidens
(She should watch them no more, alas!),
And saw as they stretched the linen
To bleach on the Suffolk grass.
In a moment her brow was cloudless,
As she leaned on the vessel’s rail,
And thought of the sea-stained garments,
Of coif and farthingale;
And the doublets of fine Welsh flannel,
The tuckers and homespun gowns,
And the piles of the hose knitted
From the wool of the Devon downs.
So the matrons aboard the Mayflower
Made ready with eager hand
To drop from the deck their baskets
As soon as the prow touched land.
And there did the Pilgrim Mothers,
“On a Monday,” the record says,
Ordain for their new-found England
The first of her washing-days.
And there did the Pilgrim Fathers,
With matchlock and axe well slung,
Keep guard o’er the smoking kettles
That propt on the crotches hung.
For the trail of the startle savage
Was over the marshy grass,
And the glint of his eyes kept peering
Through cedar and sassafras.
And the children were mad with pleasure
As they gathered the twigs in sheaves,
And piled on the fire the fagots,
And heaped up the autumn leaves.
“Do the thing that is next,” saith the proverb,
And a nobler shall yet succeed:
’Tis the motive exalts the action;
’Tis the doing, and not the deed;
For the earliest act of the heroes
Whose fame has a world-wide sway
Was—to fashion a crane for a kettle,
And order a washing-day!
* * *
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH
Early on the settlers expressed their thanksgiving for the evidence of God’s good providence in their lives. Despite all the hardships they faced, they recognized the peculiar opportunity they had been afforded. Thus they outwardly affirmed their fealty to God and His ways. In this verse a renowned historical poet captures that predisposition toward gratitude in early Boston.
“Praise ye the Lord!” The Psalm today
Still rises on our ears,
Borne from the hills of Boston Bay
Through five times fifty years,
When Wintrop’s fleet from Yarmouth crept
Out to the open main,
And through the widening waters swept,
In April sun and rain.
“Pray to the Lord with fervent lips,”
The leader shouted, “pray”;
And prayer arose from all the ships
As faded Yarmouth Bay.
They passed the Scilly Isles that day,
And May-days came, and June,
And trice upon the ocean lay
The full orb of the moon.
And as that day, on Yarmouth Bay,
Ere England sunk from view,
While yet the rippling Solent lay
In April skies of blue.
“Pray to the Lord with fervent lips,”
Each morn was shouted, “pray”;
And prayer arose from all the ships,
As first in Yarmouth Bay;
Blew warm the breeze o’er Western seas,
Through Maytime morns, and June,
Till hailed these souls the Isles of Shoals,
Low ’neath the summer moon;
And as Cape Ann arose to view,
And Norman’s Woe they passed,
The wood-doves came the white mists through,
And circled round each mast.
“Pray to the Lord with fervent lips,”
Then called the leader, “pray”;
And prayer arose from all the ships,
As first in Yarmouth Bay.
Above the sea the hill-tops fair;
God’s towers—began to rise,
And odors rare breathe through the air,
Like balms of Paradise.
Through burning skies the ospreys flew,
And near the pine-cooled shores
Danced airy boat and thin canoe,
To flash of sunlit oars.
“Pray to the Lord with fervent lips,”
The leader shouted, “pray!”
Then prayer arose, and all the ships
Sailed in Boston Bay.
The whit wings folded, anchors down,
The sea-worn fleet in line,
Fair rose the hills where Boston town
Should rise from clouds of pine:
Fair was the harbor, summit-walled,
And placid lay the sea.
“Praise ye the Lord,” the leader called;
“Praise ye the Lord,” spake he.
“Give thanks to God with fervent lips,
Give thanks to God today,”
The anthem rose from all the ships,
Safe moored in Boston Bay.
* * *
ANNE BRADSTREET
The daughter and wife of renowned Puritan pioneers, Anne Bradstreet distinguished herself as the first published poet in the New England colonies. Her first volume of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was met with widespread praise in both London and Boston when it was published in 1650. This poem is her tribute to her father, Thomas Dudley, who died in 1653.
Within this tomb a patriot lies
That was both pious, just and wise,
To truth a shield, to right a wall,
To sectaries a whip and maul,
A magazine of history,
A prizer of good company
In manners pleasant and severe
The good him loved, the bad did fear,
And when his time with years was spent
In some rejoiced, more did lament.
* * *
COTTON MATHER
One of the most brilliant and prolific of the early colonists, Cotton Mather was the scion of a prominent family of academics and clerics. His more than three hundred published works, spanning an astonishing array of subjects and disciplines, helped to establish the substantive cultural tenor of the Massachusetts colony. Perhaps his most famous book, Essays to Do Good, excerpted here, reiterated Governor Winthrop’s call for America to be a beacon light to the world of charity and grace.
Such glorious things are spoken in the oracles of our good God, concerning them who devise good, that a book of good devices, may very reasonably demand attention and acceptance from them that have any impressions of the most reasonable religion upon them. I am devising such a book; but at the same time offering a sorrowful demonstration, that if men would set themselves to devise good, a world of good might be done, more than there is in this present evil world.
It is very sure the world has need enough. There needs abundance to be done, that the great God and His Christ may be more known and served in the world; and that the errors which are impediments to the acknowledgment wherewith men ought to glorify their Creator and Redeemer may be rectified. There needs abundance to be done, that the evil manners of the world, buy which men are drowned in perdition, may be reformed; and mankind rescued from the epidemical corruption and slavery which has overwhelmed it. There needs abundance to be done, that the miseries of the world may have remedies and abatements provided for them; and that miserable people may be relieved and comforted.
The world has according to the computation of some, above seven hundred millions of people now living in it. What an ample field among all these, to do good upon! In a word, the kingdom of God in the world, calls for innumerable services from us. To do such things is to do good. Those men devise good, who shape any devices to do things of such a tendency, whether the things be of a spiritual importance, or of a temporal.
You see, the general matter, appearing as yet, but as a chaos, which is to be wrought upon. Oh! that the good Spirit of God may now fall upon us, and carry on the glorious work which lies before us.
* * *
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The grave dangers of those first few adventures in colonization and settlement were highlighted in the songs, legends, and folklore of the American experience. This verse from one of the nation’s greatest poets captures the sense of this peril—and the tragedy that often accompanied it.
Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair, Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the East Wind was his breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pinions wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o’er the main.
Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land wind failed.
Alas! the land wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.
He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as near,”
He said, “by water as by land!”
In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal’s sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.
The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o’er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.
* * *
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The story of the Indian princess Pocahontas is among the greatest romances of the American frontier. In this retelling of the story, a famed English author highlights the valor demonstrated by all the inhabitants of the rugged land—both the native and the newly arrived.
Wearied arm and broken sword
Wage in vain the desperate fight;
Round him press a countless horde,
He is but a single knight.
Hark! A cry of triumph shrill
Through the wilderness resounds,
As, with twenty bleeding wounds,
Sinks the warrior, fighting still.
Now they heap the funeral pyre,
And the torch of death they light;
Ah! Tis hard to die by fire!
Who will shield the captive knight?
Round the stake with fiendish cry
Wheel and dance the savage crowd,
Cold the victim’s mien and proud,
And his breast is bared to die.
Who will shield the fearless heart?
Who avert the murderous blade?
From the throng with sudden start
See, there springs an Indian maid.
Quick she stands before the knight:
“Loose the chain, unbind the ring!
I am daughter of the King,
And claim the Indian right!”
Dauntlessly aside she flings
Lifted axe and thirsty knife,
Fondly to his heart she clings,
And her bosom guards his life!
In the woods of Powhatan,
Still tis told by Indian fires
How a daughter of their sires
Saved a captive Englishman.
* * *
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH
The first few winters in the New World were treacherous for the new colonists. In the Plymouth colony, the settlers died in droves from both sickness and starvation. In this verse, the necessity of rationing the meager food resources is set alongside the abundant moral reserves of the people. Long a part of the traditional New England holiday tradition—before the turkey is carved each member of the family is served a mere five kernels of corn, after which this inspiring poem is recited—the remembrance of Plymouth has become a symbol of the incredible blessing of this land.
Twas the year of the famine in Plymouth of old,
The ice and the snow from the thatched roofs had rolled;
Through the warm purple skies steered the geese o’er the seas,
And the woodpeckers tapped in the clocks of the trees;
And the boughs on the slopes to the south winds lay bare,
And dreaming of summer, the buds swelled in the air.
The pale Pilgrims welcomed each reddening morn;
There were left but for rations Five Kernels of Corn.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
But to Bradford a feast were Five Kernels of Corn!
“Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye people, be glad for Five Kernels of Corn!”
So Bradford cried out on bleak Burial Hill,
And the thin women stood in their doors, white and still.
“Lo, the harbor of Plymouth rolls bright in the Spring,
The maples grow red, and the wood robins sing,
The west wind is blowing, and fading the snow
And the pleasant pines sing, and arbutuses blow.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
To each one be given Five Kernels of Corn!”
O Bradford of Austerfield haste on thy way.
The west winds are blowing o’er Provincetown Bay,
The white avens bloom, but the pine domes are chill,
And new graves have furrowed Precisioners’ Hill!
“Give thanks, all ye people, the warm skies have come,
The hilltops are sunny, and green grows the holm,
And the trumpets of winds, and the white March is gone,
And ye still have left you Five Kernels of Corn.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye have for Thanksgiving Five Kernels of Corn!
“The raven’s gift eat and be humble and pray,
A new light is breaking, and Truth leads your way;
One taper a thousand shall kindle: rejoice
That to you has been given the wilderness voice!”
O Bradford of Austerfield, daring the wave,
And safe though the sounding blasts leading the brave,
Of deeds such as thine was the free nation born,
And the festal world sings the “Five Kernels of Corn.”
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
The nation gives thanks for Five Kernels of Corn!
To the Thanksgiving Feast bring Five Kernels of Corn!
* * *
JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER
By the end of the colonial era, the little settlements had grown into considerable political, economic, and military forces. When the grave conflict between France and England spread to the Americas, what we call the French and Indian War began. One of the most heroic and romantic English leaders in that struggle—who also happened to be young George Washington’s commanding officer—is celebrated in this verse. In addition the remarkable growth and maturity of the colonies is highlighted here.
Said the sword to the axe,
“Twixt the whacks and the hacks,
Who’s your bold Berserker, cleaving of tracks?
Hewing a highway through greenwood and glen,
Foot-free for cattle and heart-free for men?”
“Braddock of Fontenoy, stubborn and grim,
Carving a cross on the wilderness rim;
In his own doom building large for the Lord
Steeple and State!” said the axe to the sword.
Said the blade to the axe,
“And shall none say him nay?
Never a broadsword to bar him the way?
Never a bush where a Huron may hide,
Or the shot of Shawnee spit red on his side?”
Down the long trail from the Fort to the ford,
Naked and streaked, plunge a moccasined horde:
Huron and Wyandot, hot for the bout;
shawnee and ottawa, barring him out!
Red’ning the ridge,
Twixt a gorge and a gorge
Bold to the sky, loom the ranks of Saint George;
Braddock of Fontenoy, belted and horsed,
For a foe to be struck and a pass to be forced
Twixt the pit and the crest, twixt the rocks and the grass,
Where the bush hides the foe, and the foe holds the pass,
Beaujeu and Pontiac, striving amain;
Huron and Wyandot, jeering the slain!
Beaujeu, bon camarade!
Beaujeu the Gay!
Beaujeu and Death cast their blades in the fray.
Never a rifle that spared when they spoke,
Never a scalp-knife that balked in its stroke.
Till the red hillocks marked
Where their sabers had glanced.
But Braddock raged fierce in that storm by the ford,
And railed at his “curs” with the flat of his sword!
Said the sword to the axe,
“Where’s your Berserker now?
Lo! His bones mark a path for a countryman’s cow.
And Beaujeu the Gay? Give him place, right or wrong,
In your tale of a camp, or your stave of a song.”
“But Braddock of Fontenoy, stubborn and grim,
Who but he carved a cross on the wilderness rim?
In his own doom building large for the Lord,
Steeple and State!” said the axe to the sword.