Classic Poem

How deep-laid was the foundation
Of the Pilgrims education!
First the meeting-house was built,
Lest the plant of Grace should wilt.
There the learned Cushing expounded
In long periods logic-rounded,
And the listeners were warmed
By the terrors at them stormed,
Though the powdery snow was sifted
Through the cracks and round them drifted
And their quickened breath congealed.
In the bare room where they kneeled.

Here town-meetings were assembled,
Here caught malefactors trembled
When before the magistrate
They were brought to learn their fate.
Soon the low-rooft schoolhouse beckoned
Where the children read and reckoned,
And the brightest boys were drilled
With the lore the teacher skilled,
That they might be sent to college
To acquire the needed knowledge —
Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Theology,
Fluent use of terminology,
And be shepherds of the people —
One for each new-rising steeple!
So the college, like the Ark
Shining in the desert dark,
By their fostering wisdom shielded,
Light beneficent soon yielded.

All were proud to give a share
Of their labor to its care:
Farmers brought their maize and barley,
Cut the firewood knobbed and gnarly,
Gave it not as sacrifice,
But as their religion's price.
So his linen gave the weaver,
And the trapper hunting beaver,
Mink and otter, gave his furs
To increase the ministers.

Harvard, this was thy beginning,
Seed of farming, hunting, spinning!
What a marvelous knowledge-fruit
Grew from that portentous shoot.
Such, O Yale, was thy foundation —
Pride and glory of our nation!
Yet our nation is not loath
All the cost of centuries' growth,
Of all kindred institutions,
Built on countless contributions
From the unselfish and the wise,
Oft at heart's-blood sacrifice,
To expend on steel-clad cruisers!

Answer! Are we gainers, losers,
By this mobile walls of forts
Costing more than Wisdom's courts,
By these lightning charged defences
Whose omnivorous expenses
Swallow wealth which mines and soil,
Which unceasing human toil,
As by Fate it strives and wrestles,
Pour ungrudging down each vessel's
Never-satiated maw
That we may break Christ's sane law?

Was't for this the Mayflower staggered
O'er the Atlantic with that haggard
Homesick, heart-wrung, humble, grand
Half-fanatic Pilgrim Band,
Whose self-sacrifice courageous
Lives for centuries, — contagious,
Stirring men to higher things,
Lifting them as if on wings,
Wings of Faith and of Devotion
Over Duty's stormy ocean?

Was 't for this a continent
Of immeasurable extent,
Virgin, uncontaminated,
For her spouse and master waited,
With an unexampled dower
Of wealth, beauty, glory, power?
Must she like a slave be ravished?
Must her riches vast be lavished
For the ruin of the earth,
That Time's brightest, holiest birth
Should inherit desolation,
When by peace, by education
Our America might lay
Evermore the sword away?