SWARTH promise of the country gave them reason
To scan what native elements it had;
Salt marsh grass going to the river, and at this season
The river crowded with lamprey eels and shad;
The Indian rows of beans and maize
In the good weather’s
Heat sent shoots from the ground. . .
The sun spread a copper haze. . .
All day birds of colored feathers
Sang and flew around. . .
They rose to landscapes, many tree leaves gleaming
With moisture in the mystic forest spell;
The wilderness was summer dreaming,
But they were not dreaming,
A field was hoed, a post was put as well. . .
An Indian youth, lithe as spring, came running,
Lipped with the inland woods, to them one day,
And told them, while they dared to stand there sunning,
A caravan was in the woods on its way. . .
They watched the rain on their seed, the spring showers,
Then over the field they saw the rainbow’s arch
On them, on their plantation, on the trees and flowers. . .
As they were hearing Thomas Hooker march.
And now they listened more, and, almost reaching
To him, they listened as he stood
In their midst, and comforted with preaching
His flock on that first sweet Sabbath in the wood;
They sensed when his body was most aching
And lifted him on the tangled path he took;
And every footstep that his feet were taking
They heard; at Longmeadow Gate; they could hear his footsteps
ring;
And at Namerick Brook,
And at Pilgrims’ Spring. . .
Over the river on rafts at Bissell’s Ferry –
Hooker, Crusader, Utopian Dreamer, Puritan Divine,
Leading his people into their very
Country, men, women and children, with their cattle, goats and
swine.
They were
At Windsor;
At Captain Holmes’ trading house now –
If the men at Hartford were not there to meet him, they heard the
bivouac, they knew how
The men at Windsor heartened Hooker, after the woods’
Shadow. . .
Hooker, at fifty, leading his flock into the North Meadow. . .
Those men, enthused to settle a plantation –
Their voices must have matched a mutual cheer,
And times when they were met in stern elation,
They must have thought: “Thomas Hooker will come here;”
And from the first he must have seemed beside them,
Newtown and Hartford not such space apart;
And when they prayed he was there to guide them,
Himself so given to others in his heart;
His presence was there, above
Most men in height . . like when, sea dangers passed,
He cried to the welcoming faces, moved by their love,
“Now I will live if in the Lord you stand fast!”
A wilderness, to them a town their own –
They knew they were ordained to clear the ground,
And from the first no merest doubt was shown,
For giants walked these streets and strode around;
Hooker and Haynes and other great men were here;
All bending at their work to build a town,
With noise and sweat and friendly Indians near,
Sailing canoes in the river up and down;
Lots were parcelled and workmen’s wages set,
The swales were filled, new paths were smoothed away,
Houses sprang up each side of the Riveret;
They built a meeting-house of logs and clay,
Where Hooker preached – think what it must have been
To have seen this man, to have heard this orator,
Prophet, half-sad for future time and men,
Yet Pastor of the folk he labored for.
They loved him as the guardian of their flock;
He loved them so, but far more it would seem;
As ever bringing flowers from a rock –
One would have served to illustrate his dream
Of men made simple as they were meant to be –
Free –
Oh, to have seen him hold a crowd entranced,
His sermons for the people, not the shelf,
With simple truth echoingly enhanced,
Giving to each one his Individual Self –
Oh, to have seen him mirror the sinner’s soul
Made whole –
Oh, to have seen him shake it –
Or to have heard him shout: “Since God has given you liberty—
take it”
They built this town from liking it too much,
From detriments with which they had to cope;
They built it, too, from quarreling with the Dutch
Colors flying from the House of Good Hope;
They built this town of purpose hungered for;
Of heart and brain, and something more profound;
They built it, too, of fire from the Pequot War,
When Mason burned the wigwams to the ground.
They went to war too spare of men, too tired,
To measure depth beyond expediency,
Or think if latent hatred was inspired
By deeper hurts and brooded enmity. T
They went as ready warriors to shield
Their growing hamlet, free it of torment,
The tomahawk, the child snatched from the field –
They could illy afford to go – but they went. . .
Sometimes in red-banked evening we aspire,
When voices speak, almost to speak a name :
The Indians who must go, went up in fire –
But Captainship and Chieftancy still flame –
Knotted eye to eye, we see them stand –
It was the worsting of the white or red!
Then Mason, in a corner, lit the brand. . .
The white man came. . .
The Indian fire burned low . . . and a proud Chief was dead. . .
We see them when they returned, as with faint cheers,
Nor time for them, their jealous thought the land’s;
They turned to it with heroic hands. . .
With scarred hands, blistering with tears. . .
What of the Seed, dark-buried, glistening, what?
While men were clutched in war, with dreams it cried.
It lived through war, through famine, harvest rot,
While men with wasted sobs and cattle died.
When Hooker, a gaunt Prophet on the shore,
Saw spirit-men, such as the Lord would choose,
When Indians came from Deerfield in canoes
Laden with corn, and a strange vessel came to moor, –
The Master, the Merchant, the provisions as if decreed,
But Hooker preached it was of spirit-men. . .
So the Seed
Found dew and light . . . they rose up then. . .
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