"Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the illu

sion?

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

200

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,

205

Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of Baal.

198, 199 Longfellow supposes Alden's attachment to have begun in England. See the sketch of the poem in the preface.

206 Astaroth and Baal: these were Phoenician deities, Astaroth, also spelled Astarte, being about the same as the Roman Venus. Look up Judges ii. 12, 13, and I Samuel xii. 10. What Commandment was broken by such worship?

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 Mayflowers blooming

around him,

210

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 Pris

cilla!

So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the Mayflower of Plymouth,

215

210 Mayflowers: the trailing arbutus. The name is applied in England to the hawthorn. It is said that the Pilgrims called the trailing arbutus thus after the hawthorn of their old home.

208, 209 These lines would seem to indicate that there were other houses in the settlement that winter than the little cluster on Leyden St. Another instance of poetic license.

212 What story is referred to?

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,

220

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,

225

Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many.

224 Who wrote the words of the hundredth Psalm?

225 Who was Luther? Who was the Psalmist, and why was he so called?

226 Look up Genesis ii. 7.

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.

230

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.

228 Wheel: what sort of wheel is this? Can you give a description of it? Where did she get the wool?

229 Ravenous: why is the spindle called ravenous?

231 Ainsworth: a saintly leader and teacher among the Puritans. He was forced to remove to Holland, and there occupied his life with writings on the different books of the Bible. He died about 1622.

233, 234 A good description of a page of the hymn book. The art of printing was introduced in 1454. The use of such an art grows slowly, so that after the lapse of a century and a half the printing was still rough.

Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem,

235

She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, Making the humble house and the modest apparel of homespun

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;

240

All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes that had vanished,

All his life henceforth a dreary and tenantless man

sion,

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;

245

Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its fountains,

287, 238 Compare these lines from Herbert's "Elixir":

"Who sweeps a room as by Thy laws

Makes that and the action fine."

245 Look up Luke ix. 62.