We Hope That God, Who Stirred Up The Spirit Of
Cyrus To Set Forward Temple Work, Has Stirred Us Up
To ask, and
will stir you up to grant, the prayer of our petition; so shall
your humble petitioners ever
Pray, as in duty bound - " And so the
temple work went forward here to a happy conclusion. Yonder in
Carlisle the building of the temple was many wearisome years
delayed, not that there was wanting of Shittim wood, or the gold
of Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the worshippers;
whether on "Buttrick's Plain," or rather on "Poplar Hill." - It
was a tedious question.
In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select from year to
year; a series of town clerks, at least; and there are old
records that you may search. Some spring the white man came,
built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting in the sun,
dried up a farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down
the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from
the old country, and persuaded the civil apple-tree to blossom
next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding its perfume in
the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain. He culled the
graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so
refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the
stream, and drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the
wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat,
and with the whetting of his scythe scared off the deer and bear.
He set up a mill, and fields of English grain sprang in the
virgin soil. And with his grain he scattered the seeds of the
dandelion and the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling his
English flowers with the wild native ones. The bristling
burdock, the sweet-scented catnip, and the humble yarrow planted
themselves along his woodland road, they too seeking "freedom to
worship God" in their way. And thus he plants a town. The white
man's mullein soon reigned in Indian cornfields, and
sweet-scented English grasses clothed the new soil. Where, then,
could the Red Man set his foot? The honey-bee hummed through the
Massachusetts woods, and sipped the wild-flowers round the
Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed, when, with prophetic
warning, it stung the Red child's hand, forerunner of that
industrious tribe that was to come and pluck the wild-flower of
his race up by the root.
The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought,
with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well
what he knows, not guessing but calculating; strong in community,
yielding obedience to authority; of experienced race; of
wonderful, wonderful common sense; dull but capable, slow but
persevering, severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a
laboring man, despising game and sport; building a house that
endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and
baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length forgets
where he is buried and ploughs up his bones. And here town
records, old, tattered, time-worn, weather-stained chronicles,
contain the Indian sachem's mark perchance, an arrow or a beaver,
and the few fatal words by which he deeded his hunting-grounds
away. He comes with a list of ancient Saxon, Norman, and Celtic
names, and strews them up and down this river, - Framingham,
Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Billerica, Chelmsford, - and this is
New Angle-land, and these are the New West Saxons whom the Red
Men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese, and so at last
they are known for Yankees.
When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, the fields on
either hand had a soft and cultivated English aspect, the village
spire being seen over the copses which skirt the river, and
sometimes an orchard straggled down to the water-side, though,
generally, our course this forenoon was the wildest part of our
voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very civil life
there. The inhabitants were plainly cultivators of the earth,
and lived under an organized political government. The
school-house stood with a meek aspect, entreating a long truce to
war and savage life. Every one finds by his own experience, as
well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate the
apple, and the amenities of the garden, is essentially different
from that of the hunter and forest life, and neither can displace
the other without loss. We have all had our day-dreams, as well
as more prophetic nocturnal vision; but as for farming, I am
convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the
agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth
with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his
bill into a tree. There is in my nature, methinks, a singular
yearning toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming qualities
in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am
reproved I fall back on to this ground. What have I to do with
ploughs? I cut another furrow than you see. Where the off ox
treads, there is it not, it is farther off; where the nigh ox
walks, it will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my
crop fails not, and what are drought and rain to me? The rude
Saxon pioneer will sometimes pine for that refinement and
artificial beauty which are English, and love to hear the sound
of such sweet and classical names as the Pentland and Malvern
Hills, the Cliffs of Dover and the Trosachs, Richmond, Derwent,
and Winandermere, which are to him now instead of the Acropolis
and Parthenon, of Baiae, and Athens with its sea-walls, and
Arcadia and Tempe.
Greece, who am I that should remember thee,
Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylae?
Is my life vulgar, my fate mean,
Which on these golden memories can lean?
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