Pestalozzi
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 saviors fearless of the cross:
One self-forgetting hero may command
And mold 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 Lucerne 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 all men stand erect!
On Education found the Church and State.
I send through Europe my imploring call:
Millennial blessings round the Kindergarten wait!
“Unfold what is within! Develop! Make
Full, fragrant efflorescence of the soul!
Let bloom the brain and call the heart awake!
Nothing repress; expand the being, whole,
Complete and perfect under Nature's awe,
Our dear Schoolmistress.” Thus prophetic spake
A voice of faith, forecharged with evolution's law.
Thus the reformer's zealous wisdom taught:
Thus, sometime, pled with Bonaparte austere,
Who, scorning prophecy in soaring thought
Of self, flung answer with a royal sneer:
“We can't be troubled with the A-B-C!”
Vain Emperor! the sword with which he fought
Made slaves, which battling alphabets set free.
The culture-captain had his marshals, too,
Ritter and Froebel and a legion more;
They proselyted nations, old and new,
They set their banners fair on every shore;
A million teachers follow in the way
The martyr opened to the good and true;
Our children bask in beam of Pestalozzi's day.
He deemed his lavish life of no avail,
Dim was his prospect of the Promised Land;
But even then when faith and hope did fail,
The seeds, wide scattered from his weary hand,
Were springing, waving, bursting into flower;
For grain of truth is waft on every gale
And sinks in every soil its root of deathless power.
He fell in conflict, but the field was won;
First Democrat of Culture! Thinker brave!
Hail, Switzerland, proud mother of such son,
Heap laurel garlands on his honored grave!
In flowers hide its consecrated sod!
Time writes his shining epitaph: “Well done!”
And Science vindicates his confidence in God.
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 saviors fearless of the cross:
One self-forgetting hero may command
And mold 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 Lucerne 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 all men stand erect!
On Education found the Church and State.
I send through Europe my imploring call:
Millennial blessings round the Kindergarten wait!
“Unfold what is within! Develop! Make
Full, fragrant efflorescence of the soul!
Let bloom the brain and call the heart awake!
Nothing repress; expand the being, whole,
Complete and perfect under Nature's awe,
Our dear Schoolmistress.” Thus prophetic spake
A voice of faith, forecharged with evolution's law.
Thus the reformer's zealous wisdom taught:
Thus, sometime, pled with Bonaparte austere,
Who, scorning prophecy in soaring thought
Of self, flung answer with a royal sneer:
“We can't be troubled with the A-B-C!”
Vain Emperor! the sword with which he fought
Made slaves, which battling alphabets set free.
The culture-captain had his marshals, too,
Ritter and Froebel and a legion more;
They proselyted nations, old and new,
They set their banners fair on every shore;
A million teachers follow in the way
The martyr opened to the good and true;
Our children bask in beam of Pestalozzi's day.
He deemed his lavish life of no avail,
Dim was his prospect of the Promised Land;
But even then when faith and hope did fail,
The seeds, wide scattered from his weary hand,
Were springing, waving, bursting into flower;
For grain of truth is waft on every gale
And sinks in every soil its root of deathless power.
He fell in conflict, but the field was won;
First Democrat of Culture! Thinker brave!
Hail, Switzerland, proud mother of such son,
Heap laurel garlands on his honored grave!
In flowers hide its consecrated sod!
Time writes his shining epitaph: “Well done!”
And Science vindicates his confidence in God.
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