Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/263

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JOHN ELIOT, THE INDIAN APOSTLE. 257

Winthrop s wife,, and his rosy children, Sought the deck as they nearer drew ; For husband and father waited yonder, Over the less ning stretch of blue.

��Outlooking stood the English teacher, John Eliot.

He did not know

He saw his kingdom stretched before him, His crown beneath New England s snow. Ah ! how my pulse leaps to remember More than two hundred years have gone, And still within this wrist-vein purple That blessed Pilgrim blood flows on !

  • * * *

We turn the leaves of the good man s life Till we pass a score of years, And a pictured page of his blessed work Lies over its hopes and fears.

Fair, gentle Anne in her English home But waited the builded nest, Then came, troth-plighted long ago, To the English teacher s breast; Who, long ago, being ill content With the care of a parish wide, With hungry heart, looking still about For the waiting souls outside, Through the darkened door of a language new Had gone like a palmer gray, 22 * R

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