The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest:
When summer's throned on high,
And the world's warm breast is in verdure drest,
Go, stand on the hill where they lie.
The earliest ray of the golden day
On that hallowed spot is cast;
And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,
Looks kindly on that spot last.
The Pilgrim spirit has not fled:
It walks in noon's broad light;
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,
With the holy stars by night.
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,
And still guard this ice-bound shore,
Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay,
Shall foam and freeze no more.
John Pierpont.
King Charles, little suspecting that he was providing an asylum for the Puritans, confirmed the patent by a royal charter to "The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." No place for the meetings of the company had been named in the charter, and the audacious plan was formed to remove it, patents, charter, and all, to New England. Secret meetings were held, the old officers were finally got rid of, and John Winthrop was elected governor. Winthrop sailed for America on April 7, 1630, and arrived at Salem June 12. It was the beginning of a great emigration, for, in the four months that followed, seventeen ships arrived, with nearly a thousand passengers.
THE THANKSGIVING IN BOSTON HARBOR
[June 12, 1630]
"Praise ye the Lord!" The psalm to-day
Still rises on our ears,
Borne from the hills of Boston Bay
Through five times fifty years,
When Winthrop'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 thrice 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 into Boston Bay.