* * * * *
"Doing!" seems to murmur its sustained voice with its rhythmic storming of my soul,
"Doing! I am doing what man is doing, what the nations are evolving, what the eternal, creative spirit living within me is urging,
I am resolutely moving—crest, wave, tide and ponderous deep in sympathy with world harmony, toward democracy.
Moving from ponderous deep, tide, wave and crest toward distant lands.
Eager—so providenced—to carry to all pagan shores,
The ships, the statesmen and the life giving trade winds of democracy."
* * * * *
"It is true, astonishingly," I said,
"Yes now I sense it and I feel it.
And what an unconquerable will, what a purpose!
The very shores, they tremble with its resolution,
For with man even the seas are sympathically for freemen at work!"
* * * * *
And then looking outward and skyward, the God of our sea going fathers, the spirit of the very God of Hosts, awoke this stronger message to my thought:
"Fear not, O sons of Pilgrims
For the waters engulfed not Columbus' freemen when they sailed a shoreless sea,
Nor was the Mayflower immeshed in the black jaws of an angry deep.
And yours are ships of fate!
He who omnipotently palms the oceans pilots them.
To let them pass—O ships—to bear them safely on,
The tides, the storms and the winds are stayed.
* * * * *
"Move on, move on befriended by an illimitable peace.
Move on, move on to every slave desecrated shore!
Move on, the harmless, but forward momentum of these tides will take you on and on.
For the Creator worketh hitherto and they must work.
For He hath given "to the sea His decree."
Move on to Hindu, Confucian and Teutonic shores.
O ships of freemen, sail on!"
"Winnow me through with thy keen, clean breath
Wind with tang of the sea."
—Ketchum.