The Courtship of Miles Standish

So the strong will prevailed, and Alden went on his errand, / Out of the street of the village, and into the paths of the forest, / Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building / Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens of verdure, / Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection and freedom. / All around him was calm, but within him commotion and conflict, / Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse. / To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing, / As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, / Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the ocean! / "Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild lamentation, / "Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the illusion? / Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and worshipped in silence? / Was it for this I have followed the flying feet and the shadow / Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New England? / Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths of corruption / Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of passion; / Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions of Satan. / All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! / This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in anger, / For I have followed too much the heart's desires and devices, / Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of Baal. / This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift retribution."

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; / Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled over pebble and shallow, / Gathering still, as he went, the May-flowers blooming around him, / Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness, / Children lost in the woods, and covered with leaves in their slumber. / "Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puritan maidens, / Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of Priscilla! / So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the May-flower of Plymouth, / Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will I take them; / Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and wither and perish, / Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver. " / So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; / Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, / Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind; / Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow; / Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla / Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem, / Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist, / Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many. / Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden / Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift / Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, / While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. / Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth, / Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together, / Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, / Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses. / Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem, / She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, / Making the humble house and the modest apparel of home-spun / Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth of her being! / Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold and relentless, / Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight and woe of his errand; / All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes that had vanished, / All his life henceforth a dreary and tenantless mansion, / Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful faces. / Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, / "Let not him that putteth his hand to the plough look backwards; / Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its fountains, / Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the hearths of the living, / It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy endureth for ever!"