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“The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers”

(The Pilgrim Fathers have virtues ascribed to them which they never possessed—Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart.)

The breaking waves dashed high
On a warm and pleasant coast,
And the woods against an azure sky
Their Parrish branches toss’d;

And the summer night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When those summer tourists moor’d their bark
On the swell New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the weak-hearted, came.
But, like a bunch of exiled bums,
Trying to beat the game.

There were men with thinning hair
Amidst that pilgrim class;
Why had they come to wither there
In a burg like Plymouth, Mass.?

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