Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils!
Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent.”
Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered;
But still they suffered her to die.
Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear the sighs
Of desolate women and penitent, remorseful men.

Sing of happier themes, O many-voiced epic,
Sing how the ages, like thrifty husbandmen, winnow the creeds of
men,
And leave only faith and love and truth.
Sing of the Puritan’s nobler nature,
Fathomless as the forests he felled,
Irresistible as the winds that blow.
His trenchant conviction was but the somber bulwark
Which guarded his pure ideal.
Resolute by the communion board he stood,
And after solemn prayer solemnly cancelled
And abolished the divine right of kings
And declared the holy rights of man.
Prophet and toiler, yearning for other worlds, yet wise in this;
Scornful of earthly empire and brooding on death,
Yet wrestling life out of the wilderness
And laying stone on stone the foundation of a temporal state!
I see him standing at his cabin-door at eventide
With dreaming, fearless eyes gazing at sunset hills;
In his prophetic sight Liberty, like a bride,
Hasteth to meet her lord, the westward-going man!
Even as he saw the citadel of Heaven,
He beheld an earthly state divinely fair and just.