BY THEIR FRUITS.
ABOVE the clash of counter creeds
These gospel accents swell:
Whoever doeth righteous deeds
Hath read his Bible well.
Like fragrant blooms of lavish spring
Are adoration’s vows;
The tree that pleases God will bring
Fair fruitage on its boughs.
PESTALOZZI.
For the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Pestalozzi, celebrated in Cincinnati, January 13, 1896.
THROUGH vasty shades of savage Occident
The Ohio groped what time the man I sing
Took first quick draught of that free element
That thrills Swiss life, and felt the quivering
Of Alpine light which welcomed him to earth.
In Zurich then was born—sublime event—
A man-child in whose soul new gospels waited birth.
The world is ever plastic in the hand
Of humble saviours fearless of the cross:
One self-forgetting hero may command
And mould the future, scorning present loss:
Meek Pestalozzi, herding in his mind
Helvetia’s strayling little children, planned
By their salvation surely to redeem mankind.
Much hope, more love possessed him, but most grief;
His heart, a mourner, sobbed o’er common woe:
Did the Almighty slumber or seem deaf
To wails ascending from His poor below?
Nay, Heaven remembers every bitter tear,
Yet mundane ills must seek on earth relief;
Lo, the Divine hath found a human volunteer.
By sad Lucern arose the children’s cry,
The shelterless, the poor, the innocent;
The man of Zurich spake: “They must not die:
War cast them out, but I by Peace am sent
To father them and mother them and feed
Their bodies and their spirits; need have I
None other than to share their utmost dolorous need.
“Oh, better never to be born at all
Than live forlorn, the victim of neglect!
To fall from brotherhood is lowest fall.
Lift up the low! bid man’s soul stand erect!
On Education found the Church and State.
I send through Europe my imploring call:
Millennial blessings round the Kindergarten wait!