Shut out the day and cast a twilight gloom;--
For where long since extends the verdant mead,
Shines the fair palace, beauteous gardens bloom,
One vault of green o’er-roofed a palisade
Of trunks and brambles, boscage, brake and broom;--
Amid which chafed the warriors’ surly mood,
And cracked and crashed the thickets as they trod.
XXXV.
They gained the height where now the Muses reign--
Where now Brown’s bounty[21] to the human mind
Links earth and heaven; the fruit of honest gain
Moulding the youthful soul, by taste refined,
To truth’s eternal quest.--How poor and vain,
To such high bounty, seems a meaner kind;--
But this in after times;--for forests then
Mantled the height and swarmed with savage men.
[21] Brown University.
XXXVI.
Thence, in the vale below, our Founder sees
Where dark Mooshausick rolls, and seaward casts,
Its waters,--rolling under lofty trees
With crossing branches, thick as e’er the masts
That shall, thereafter, on the wanton breeze
Display their banners, when, in sounding blasts,
The cannon utters its triumphant voice,
And bids the land through all its States rejoice.
XXXVII.
And thence, with prescient eye, he gazes far
O’er the rude sites of palaces and shrines,
Where Grecian beauty to the buxom air
Shall rise resplendent in its shapely lines;
Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar
Beneath a people’s wealth, and half divines
From thee, Soul-Liberty! what glories wait
Thy earliest altars--thy predestined State.
XXXVIII.
Then down the steep, by paths scored in its side,
Where frequent deer had sought the floods below,
He past, still following his dusky guide
And stooping often under drooping bough,
To a broad cultured field, expanding wide
Betwixt dense thickets and Mooshausick’s flow.
Its deep green rows of waving maize foretold
Abundant harvest from a fertile mould.
XXXIX.
The Priest’s forsaken lodge rose thereamid,
Beside a fountain on a verdant lawn,
Spacious as some great Sachem’s, and half-hid
In mantling vines wherewith it was o’ergrown;
And Williams thought of what his warrior did
On that dark bloody night, so direly known,--
Mourning the fate that caused the Sorcerer’s doom;
Yet sees its fruit, a temporary home.
XL.
But some last scruples still his mind assail;
For, ah! what rites had made the place profane!
When thus the chief:--“No more my son bewail
Thy comforts lost; let the Great Spirit reign
Where Chepian reigned; ay, let thy God prevail;
Be thou His Priest, and this thine own domain;
From wild Pawtucket to Pawtuxet’s bounds
To thee and thine be all the teeming grounds.”
XLI.
High thanks Sire Williams paid;--but as he spake,
Came over him a feeling passing strange;
A prophet’s rapture in his breast did wake;
For, at that moment, down the boundless range
Of heavenly spheres did some bright being take
Wing to his soul, and wrought to suited change
The visual nerve, and straight in outward space
Stood manifest in its celestial grace.[22]
[22] See note.
XLII.
At once he cried, “I see! I see the seer!
His very form, his very shape and air!
By yonder fount;--the same his robes appear;
The same his radiant eyes and flowing hair;
Mary! my children! come! his accents hear;
See age and youth one heavenly beauty share!”
They with him moved, (yet ne’er the vision saw,)
Until the father paused, transfixed in sacred awe.
XLIII.
For strange to tell, youth’s lingering light began
To spread fresh glories o’er that aged face;
Till over beard, and hair, and visage wan,
Burst the full splendor of angelic grace;
A lambent flame about the forehead ran,
And rainbow hues the earthly robes displace;
The curling locks, like beams of living light,
Streamed back and glowed insufferably bright.
XLIV.
The figure seemed to grow; its dazzling eyes
Were for a while upon Sire Williams bent,
Then upward turned, and, looking to the skies,
Spake hope in God with silence eloquent.
Still did it brighten, still its stature rise,
With Heaven’s own grandeur seeming to augment;--
The pilgrim staff no longer did it hold,
But on an Anchor leant that blazed ethereal gold.
XLV.
Our Father gazed, and, from that heavenward eye,
Beheld the clear angelic radiance flow;
And saw that figure, as it towered on high,
With inward glory fill, dilate and grow
Translucent,--and then fade,--as from the sky
The sunset fades or fades the radiant bow;
Until, dissolving in transparent air,
It disappeared and left no traces there.
XLVI.
Then low, on bended knees, he drops to own
The Heaven-born vision, and his soul declare;
His wife and children, near him kneeling down,
Send up their hearts upon the wings of prayer;
The dusky tribes, in crescent round them shown,
Give ear;--hill, vale and forest listeners are;
Force to each word their faithful echoes lend,
And with their Ruler’s prayers their own ascend.
XLVII.
“Mysterious Power! who dost in wonders speak,
We note thy tokens and their import spell;
Let Persecution still its vengeance wreak--
Let its fierce billows roll with mountain swell,
Here must we Anchor, and their force repel.
Here, more securely, shall our bannered State
Blazon the conscience sacred--ever free;
Here shall she breast the coming storms of fate
And ride triumphant o’er the raging sea,
Her well-cast Anchor here, her lasting Hope in Thee!
XLVIII.
“Here, thy assurance gives our wanderings rest,
And shows where all our future toils must be;
Lord! be our labors by thy mercies blest,
And send their fruits to far posterity;
Let our example still the Conscience free,
Where’er she is by tyrant force enchained,
And while the thraldom lasts, Oh! let her see
Her safety here, where, ever unprofaned
By persecution, her free altars are maintained.
XLIX.
“Accept, O Lord! our thanks for mercies past;
Thou wast our cloud by day, our fire by night,
While yet we journeyed through the dreary vast;
Thou Canaan more than givest to our sight;--
Lord! ’tis possessed, not seen from Pisgah’s height.
We deeply feel this high beneficence;
And ages hence our children shall recite
Of Thy protecting grace their Father’s sense,
And, when they name their Home, Proclaim Thy PROVIDENCE!”
NOTES.[23]
[23] These notes were mostly written for the poem as first
published in 1832;--none after 1847, when the author died.--[EDITOR.]
CANTO FIRST.
STANZA I.
_I_ SING _of trials, toils and sufferings great,
Which_ FATHER WILLIAMS _in his exile bore,
That he the conscience-bound might liberate,
And to the soul her sacred rights restore_.
“ROGER WILLIAMS was born of reputable parents in Wales, A. D. 1598.
He was educated at the University of Oxford; was regularly admitted
to Orders in the Church of England, and preached for some time as
a minister of that Church; but on embracing the doctrines of the
Puritans, he rendered himself obnoxious to the laws against the
non-conformists, and embarked for America, where he arrived with his
wife, whose name was Mary, on the 5th of February, A. D. 1631.” He
had scarcely landed ere he began to assert the principle of religious
freedom, and insist on a rigid separation from the Church of England.
A declaration that the magistrate ought not to interfere in matters
of conscience could not fail to excite the jealousy of a government
constituted as that of Massachusetts then was; and this jealousy was
roused into active hostility when, in the April following his arrival,
he was called by the Church of Salem as teaching Elder under their then
Pastor, Mr. Skelton.
“Of this appointment,” says Winthrop, “the Governor of Massachusetts
was informed, who immediately convened a Court in Boston to take the
subject into consideration.” Their deliberations resulted in a letter
addressed to Mr. Endicot, of Salem, to this effect:--“That whereas Mr.
Williams had refused to join the churches at Boston, because they
would not make a public declaration of their repentance, for having
communion with the Churches of England while they tarried there, and
besides had declared his opinion that the magistrate might not punish
the breach of the Sabbath, nor any other offence that was a breach of
the first table; and therefore they marveled they would choose him
without advising with the council, and withal desired him that they
would forbear to proceed until they had considered about it.”
This interference of the government forced him to leave Salem. “He
removed to Plymouth, and was engaged assistant to Mr. Ralph Smith, the
pastor of the church at that place. Here he remained until he found his
views of Religious Toleration and strict non-conformity gave offence to
some of his hearers, when he returned again to Salem, and was settled
there after Mr. Skelton’s death, which took place on the 2d of August,
1634.” In this situation Williams preached against the cross in the
ensign, as a relic of papal superstition. His preaching however, on
this topic, does not seem to have been a subject of complaint, only as
it led some of his friends to the indiscretion of defacing the colors.
His persecutors, in excusing this act to the government of England, say
that they did so, “with as much wariness as they might, being doubtful
themselves of the lawfulness of a cross in an ensign.” But though he
may have given no offence by declaring an opinion on this subject
so little at variance with their own, yet when he ventured to speak
against the king’s patent, by which he had granted to his subjects the
lands which belonged to the Indians; and, above all, to maintain that
the civil magistrate ought not to interfere in matters of conscience,
except for the preservation of peace, his presence within the
jurisdiction of Massachusetts could no longer be tolerated. A summons
was granted for his appearance at the next court.
He appeared accordingly. “It was laid to his charge,” says Winthrop,
“that, being under question before the magistracy and churches for
divers dangerous opinions, viz: That the magistrate ought not to punish
for the breaches of the first table, otherwise than in such cases as
do disturb the public peace. 2d. That he ought not to tender an oath
to an unregenerate man. 3d. That a man ought not to pray with such,
though wife, children, &c. 4th. That a man ought not to give thanks
after sacrament nor after meat, &c., and that other churches were
about to write the church of Salem to admonish him of these errors,
notwithstanding the church had since called him to the office of
Teacher.”
These charges having been read, all the magistrates and ministers
concurred in denouncing the opinions of Williams as erroneous and
dangerous, and agreed that the calling him to office at that time was
a great contempt of authority. He and the church of Salem were allowed
until the next General Court to consider of these charges, and then
either to give satisfaction to the Court, or else to expect sentence.
Much warmth of feeling was exhibited in the discussion of these
charges; and in the course of the debate it seems the ministers were
required to give their opinions severally. All agreed that he who
asserted that the civil magistrate ought not to interfere in case of
heresy, apostacy, etc., ought to be removed, and that other churches
ought to request the magistrates to remove him. Nothing will give a
better idea of the state of feeling on this occasion than the fact that
when the town of Salem at this time petitioned, claiming some land
at Marblehead as belonging to the town, the petition was refused a
hearing, on the ground that the church of Salem had chosen Mr. Williams
her teacher, and by such choice had offered contempt to the magistrates.
The attendance of all the Ministers of the Bay at the next General
Court was requested. This was held in the month of November,
1635. Before this venerable congregation of all the dignitaries
of the church, Williams appeared, and defended his opinions. His
defence, it seems, was not satisfactory. They offered him further
time for conference or disputation. This he declined, and chose to
dispute presently. Mr. Hooker was appointed to dispute with him.
But Mr. Hooker’s logic, seconded as it was by the whole civil and
ecclesiastical power of Massachusetts, could not force him to recognise
the right of the civil magistrate to punish heresy, or to admit that
the king’s patent could of itself give a just title to the lands of
the Indians. The consequence was, that on the following morning he
was sentenced to depart, within six weeks, out of the jurisdiction of
Massachusetts.
Such were the causes of Williams’ banishment, and such the
circumstances under which the decree was passed. He was a man who
fearlessly asserted his principles, and practiced upon them to their
fullest extent. Persecution could not drive him to a renunciation of
his opinions. His observance of any principle which he adopted was
conscientiously strict; but this very strictness of observance had
its advantages, in enabling him with more certainty to detect any
latent error which his opinions involved. He was as free to declare
his errors as he was to assert whatever appeared to him to be right.
His very honesty in this respect has given occasion to his enemies to
brand his character with inconsistency and apostacy; but he remained
true to every principle espoused by him, which posterity has since
sanctioned, and inconstant in those things only which are unimportant
in themselves, and which are unsettled even in the present day. A tacit
confession of his own fallibility was implied in the great principle
of which he was the earliest asserter, that government ought not to
interfere in matters of conscience; and therein consisted a wide
difference between his errors, whatever they were, and those of his
persecutors. This fact, in estimating the character of Williams, cannot
be too well considered.
“Subsequently to his banishment, he was permitted to remain until
spring, on condition that he did not attempt to draw others to his
opinions.” But the friends of Williams could not consent to see their
favorite pastor leave them, without frequently visiting him whilst they
yet had an opportunity. In these interviews, the plan of establishing
a colony in the Narraganset country, where the principle of Religious
Freedom (the assertion of which had been the chief cause of his
banishment) should be carried into effect, was discussed and matured.
It is also highly probable that he did not fail to do what he conceived
to be the duty of a faithful pastor in other respects. At length the
rumor of these meetings reached the ears of the civil authorities;
and in January, 1635, (O. S.,) “The governor and assistants,” says
Winthrop, “met in Boston to consider about Mr. Williams; for they
were credibly informed, that he, notwithstanding the injunction laid
upon him, (upon liberty granted him to stay until spring,) not to go
about to draw others to his opinions, did use to entertain company in
his house, and to preach to them even of such points as he had been
sentenced for; and it was agreed to send him into England by a ship
then ready to depart. The reason was because he had drawn about twenty
persons to his opinions, and they were intending to erect a plantation
about the Narraganset bay, from whence the infection would easily
spread into these churches, the people being many of them much taken
with an apprehension of his godliness. Whereupon a warrant was sent to
him to come presently to Boston, to be shipped, &c. He returned for
answer, (and divers of Salem came with it,) that he could not without
hazard of his life, &c. Whereupon a pinnace was sent with commission to
Captain Underhill, &c., to apprehend him, and carry him on board the
ship, which then rode at Nantascutt. But when they came to his house
they found he had been gone three days, but whither they could not
learn.”
It thus appears that the object of his government, in directing his
immediate apprehension at this time, was to prevent the establishment
of a colony in which the civil authority should not be permitted to
interfere with the religious opinions of the citizens.
Williams was in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of his age
at the time of his banishment. He fled to a wilderness inhabited
only by savages. The two principal tribes--the Narragansets and
Wampanoags--had, but a short time before he entered their country,
been engaged in open hostilities. The government of Plymouth had on
one occasion extended its aid to its early friend and ally, Massasoit,
chief sachem of the Wampanoags. This interference had smothered,
but not extinguished the flame. With these warring tribes, one of
which (the Narragansets) was a very martial and numerous people, and
exceedingly jealous of the whites, Williams was under the necessity of
establishing relations of amity. He himself says that he was forced to
travel between their sachems to satisfy them and all their dependent
spirits of his honest intentions to live peaceably by them. He acted
the part of a peace-maker amongst them, and eventually won, even for
the benefit of his persecutors, the confidence of the Narragansets.
It was through his influence that all the Indians in the vicinity of
Narraganset bay were, shortly after his settlement at Mooshausick,
united, and their whole force, under the directions of the very men
who had driven him into the wilderness, brought to co-operate with the
Massachusetts forces against the Pequots.
[See Winthrop’s Journal, and a Sketch of the Life of Roger Williams,
appended to the first volume of the Rhode Island Historical
Collections, for the above extracts.]
STANZA XII.
_Much less my consort and these pledges dear._
Williams was the father of six children, viz: Mary, Freeborn,
Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph. I am not able to determine their
number at the time of his banishment.
STANZA XLIII.
_Thrice did our northern tiger seem to come._
Frequently called the Panther, the Cat of the Mountain, or Catamount.
There is indeed no animal of America entitled to the appellation of the
Panther; but this name is frequently applied to the animal mentioned,
and is adopted in this production for that reason.
STANZA LVIII.
_’Twas Waban’s cry at which the monsters ran._
The Indians imitate very perfectly the cry of wild beasts, and use
that art in conveying signals and for other purposes, during their
hunts and other expeditions. The known antipathy between the wolf and
the catamount or panther, and the superiority of the latter over the
former, may justify the text.
STANZA LXVI.
_Where burning fagot nevermore shall glow,
Fired by the wrath of persecuting men._
I know not that the fagot has been generally used in any protestant
country for the extirpation of heresy, yet its very general application
to that purpose by Roman Catholics has, by common consent, made it the
appropriate emblem of persecution in all countries.
STANZA LXIX.
_Until Sowaniu’s breezes scatter flowers again._
Sowaniu, or the Paradise of the Indians, was supposed to be an island
in the far southwest. It was the favorite residence of their great god,
Cawtantowit, and the land of departed spirits. The balmy southwest was
a gale breathed from the heaven of the Indians.
STANZA LXXX.
_“And may the Manittoo of dreams,” he said, &c._
Manittoo--a God. It is a word which seems to have been applied to an
extraordinary power, or mysterious influence. Any astonishing effect,
produced by a cause which the Indians could not comprehend, they appear
to have ascribed to the agency of a Manittoo. It is natural for man to
draw his ideas of power or causation, from what he feels in himself;
and when he does so, he will ascribe the effects which he observes to
the influence of mind. As he advances in knowledge the number of these
mysterious agents diminishes, until at last he is forced upon the idea
of one great, designing, first cause or agent. Man, from his very
constitution, therefore, must be a believer in the existence of God.
He approaches a knowledge of his unity by degrees, and improves in his
religious opinions in the same manner as he advances to the science
of astronomy. How essential then is that freedom of opinion which our
Founder sought to establish!
CANTO SECOND.
STANZA XIII.
_In a vast eagle’s form embodied, He
Did o’er the deep on outstretched pinions spring._
It was the belief of the Chippewas, a tribe supposed to have descended
from the same original stock (Lenni Lenape) with the Narragansets,
that, before the earth appeared, all was one vast body of waters; that
the Great Spirit, assuming the shape of a mighty eagle, whose eyes
were as fire, and the sound of whose wings was as thunder, passed
over the abyss, and that, upon his touching the water, the earth rose
from the deep. It was a prevailing tradition among the Delawares and
other tribes, according to Heckewelder, that the earth was an island,
supported on the back of a huge tortoise, called in the text Unamis.
It is the object of the author to embrace in the text a selection of
their scattered traditions on the subject of creation, and to give them
something like the consistency of a system. Waban, therefore, adopting
their leading ideas, has drawn out his description into the appropriate
sequency of events. Their Creator was a Manittoo, a mysteriously
operating power, and of the same nature as that principle of causation
which they felt in themselves, as constituting their own being. The
term _Cowwewonck_, in the Narraganset dialect, signified the soul, and
was derived from _Cowwene_, to sleep; because, said they, it operates
when the body sleeps. Hence in the text, whilst the Great Spirit
slept, he is represented as commencing the work of creation--operating
on the immense of waters as a part of his own being, and imparting
to it organic existences, (as the soul from itself creates its own
conceptions,) thus giving a sort of dreamy existence to the earth and
all living things, ere He assumed the shape of the eagle, and at his
fiat imparted to them substantial form and vital energy. The idea,
that the earth was raised out of the Ocean, seems to have been pretty
general amongst the Aborigines.
STANZA XIX.
_Yet man was not; then great Cawtantowit spoke
To the hard mountain crags, and called for man._
According to the traditions of the Narragansets, the Great Spirit
formed the first man from a stone, which, disliking, he broke, and then
formed another man and woman from a tree; and from this pair sprang the
Indians.
STANZA XXII.
_Then did he send Yotaanit on high--_
Yotaanit was the God of Fire; Keesuckquand, God of the Sun;
Nanapaushat, of the Moon; and Wamponand was the ruling Deity of the
East.
STANZA XXIII.
_All things thus were formed from what was good,
And the foul refuse every evil had;
But it had felt the influence of the God,
(How should it not?)--_
Heckewelder ascribes to the Indians the opinion that nothing bad
could proceed from the Great and Good Spirit. Waban is here speaking
in conformity to that opinion. Hence he represents the creation of
Chepian, or the evil principle, as an incidental but necessary effect,
yet forming no part of the original design.
STANZA XXVII.
_And manittoos, that never death shall fear,
Do too within this moral form abide._
“They conceive,” says Williams, “that there are many gods, or divine
powers, within the body of man--in his pulse, heart, lungs, &c.”
STANZA XXVIII.
_But if a sluggard and a coward, then
To rove all wretched in the gloom of night._
“They believe that the soules of men and women go to the
southwest--their great and good men to Cawtantowit his house, where
they have hopes, as the Turks have, of carnal joys. Murtherers, liars,
&c., their soules (say they) wander restless abroad.”--_Williams’ Key._
STANZA XXXVIII.
_This yet unproved and doubted by the best._
The Charter of Pennsylvania was granted in 1681. The philanthropic Penn
was preceded by Williams in the adoption of a mild and pacific policy
toward the natives. Both seem to have been equally successful.
STANZA XLV.
_Ere dark pestilence
Devoured his warriors--laid its hundreds low,
That sachem’s war-whoop roused to his defence
Three thousand bow-men, and he still can show
A mighty force._