Classic Poem

Oh that long tempestuous voyage,
Through the weary summer's waning,
Through the day-devouring autumn,
Week on week and still no gaining!

Still the circling hard horizon.
Seemed a prison of crystal hollowed,
And their ship, chained to its center,
Only rocked and pitched and wallowed.

Suns and moons passed over slowly,
Rising in the sea and sinking;
Winds came hurrying o'er the billows —
Still they held their course unshrinking.

Oh that long tempestuous voyage!
Can you image the devotion
That would make a band of Pilgrims
Cross " a vast and furious ocean, "

Leaving kith and kin and country,
Where their grandsires had been thrifty —
Sevenscore exiles in one cabin
Scarce commodious for fifty;

Men and girls and boys and women,
Hungry for the mess of pottage,
Which at home in Merrie England
They would find in humblest cottage?

Then those babies born on shipboard!
Mothers, think of them! What anguish,
Lacking leech and all else needful
For the hours when spirits languish!

Looking forward to what country?
Fertile Canaan? desert sterile?
To what welcome? in what harbor?
All unknown, but full of peril!

How those days of prison lengthened,
Four long months from London city,
Held by calms and headstrong tempests
And the fog that knows no pity,

Ere they saw the heights of Truro
Looming in the misty distance,
And they sang to God their praises
For upholding their persistence.