Poems (Gould, 1833)/The Quaker

by Hannah Flagg Gould

THE QUAKER.

The Quaker stood under his smooth broad-brim,
In the plain drab suit, that, simple and trim,
Was better than royal robes to him,
  Who looked to the inward part,
And emptied his breast of the pride of birth,
Resigning the wealth and the honors of earth,
For the durable riches of matchless worth,
  Reserved for the pure in heart.

And he heaved a sigh at the lofty look
Of the mitred head, o'er the gilded book,
And a view of the costly drapery took
  With a meek and pitying eye.
'Alas!' said he, as he turned away
From the splendid temple, the grand display,
'What honor to worldly pomp they pay,
  In the name of the King Most High!'

Then he looked around on his own proud land,
Where those of his faith were a suffering band,
Enslaved in conscience, and under the hand
  Of merciless power oppressed.
'I'll seek,' said the Quaker, 'a happier shore,
Where I and my people may kneel before
The shrine we erect to the God we adore,
  And none shall our rites molest!'

And, sick of the sounding of empty things,
The beggarly strife in the land of kings,
His dove-like spirit unfurled its wings
  For a broad and venturous sweep:
They wafted him off, o'er billow and spray,
'Twixt the sea and the sky, on a pathless way,
To a beautiful sylvan scene, that lay
  Far over the boiling deep.

And when he came down, unruffled and staid,
Where, along the skirts of the peaceful shade,
The Schuylkill and Delaware rolled, and made
  Their sparkling waters unite,
The Indian sprang from his light canoe,
The bird to the topmost bough withdrew,
And the deer skipped up on the cliff, to view
  The new and unseemly sight.

But the tomahawk dropped from the red man's hand,
When he saw the Quaker advance, and stand,
Presenting his purse, but to share the land
  He had come to possess with him;
And scanning his mild and noble face,
Where goodness was most that his eye could trace,
He haughtily smiled at its hiding-place,
  Far under the hat's broad brim.

'Thou'lt find,' said the Quaker, 'in me and in mine,
But friends and brothers to thee, and to thine,
Who abuse no power, and would draw no line
  'Twixt the red man and the white,
Save the cord of love, as a sacred tie;
For our one great Father, who dwells on high,
Regards that child with an angry eye,
  Who robs from his brother's right.'

The Indian passed, and the Quaker stood,
The righteous lord of his shadowy wood,
Like the genius of thought, in his solitude;
  Till his spirit, the inner man,
Become too mighty to be repressed
Beneath the drab on his ample breast,
Had moved; and simply, but neatly dressed,
  Came forth, as his lips began,—

'I may not swear, but will prophesy!
This lofty forest, that towers so high,
Must bow; and its stately head will lie
  On the lap of its mother earth.
When the woodman's axe shall its pride subdue,
And its branching honors the ground shall strew,
Then some of its parts may be reared anew,
  To shelter the peaceful hearth.

'And some will go down upon distant seas,
Be firm in the tempest, and swift in the breeze,
While man and his treasures they waft with ease
  And safety, the world around!
Some to a temple the pious will raise,
That in a new house, the ancient of days
May hear, as his name in prayer and in praise,
  From the lips of his saints shall sound!

'Where now the poor Indian marks the sod
With offerings burnt to an unknown God,
By the Gospel light shall the paths be trod
  To the courts of the Prince of peace.
And commerce is here to appoint her mart;
The marble will yield to the hand of art;
From the sun of science the rays will dart,
  'And the darkness of nature cease!'

And thus did the visions of prophesy
Arise and swell, to the prophet's eye,
Till it shone so bright, and had blazed so high,
  That the gentle words, which hung
Like a string of pearls, from his cautious lip,
On their silver thread, he was fain to clip,
Lest something more than the truth might slip,
  For once, from a Quaker's tongue.

But the trees quaked too, at the things he spoke;
For they felt that the 'knee of the knotted oak'
Would bend, ere the word of a Quaker broke;
  And they bowed and kissed the ground.
The hammer and axe had abjured repose,
And the mountains rang with their distant blows,
As the forest fell, and the city rose,
  And her beauty shone around.

For her laws—they were righteous, pure, and plain,
As the warm in heart, and the cool in brain,
To bind the strong in a silken chain,
  Could in wisdom and love devise.
The tongue needed not the bond of a vow,
And man to his fellow-worm did not bow,
Or doff the screen o'er his upright brow,
  To any beneath the skies.

The Quaker went on, from land to land,
With the lowly heart and the open hand
Of one, who felt where he soon must stand,
  And his final account give in.
For long had he made up his sober mind,
That he could not depart to leave mankind,
With the ample field of the earth behind,
  No better that he had been.

And bright was the spot where the Quaker came,
To leave it his hat, his drab, and his name,
That will sweetly sound from the trump of Fame
  Till her final blast shall die.
The city he reared from the sylvan shade,
His beautiful monument now is made;
And long have the rivers their pride displayed
  In the scenes they are rolling by.