Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/161

Pastorius; Kelpius 573 protest against negro slavery on record in America, made by the German Quakers of Germantown in 1688. Pastorius's familiarity with ancient and modem languages is seen in his Hive or Beestock {Bienenstock, MeUiotrophium) , his scrap-book of encyclopaedic learning, in which historical, statistical, and geographical materials are mingled with epigrams and verses in many languages. More valuable is his description of Penn- sylvania {Umstandige geographische Beschreibung der zu aller- letzt erfundenen Provintz Pennsylvania, etc.), a collection of letters and reports sent to his father and published by the latter in book form. ' The manuscript verse-collections, Volup- tates Apiance and Delicice Hortenses reveal Pastorius as a cul- tivator of bees and flowers. "He who never has a garden, and knows naught of flowers, and never looks back into the earthly paradise, — he is but a slave and serf of the plough, and is accursed," said Pastorius the teacher, caring not solely for the progress of his pupils in the three R's or even in Latin, and fearing the engrossing materiahsm of the pioneer's existence. Contemporary with Pastorius, most quaint and curious, are the odes and theosophical writings of John Kelpius and his mystic brotherhood, called The Woman in the Wilderness. Yet more impressive still is their act of awaiting in the Amer- ican forest the end of the world, forecast to come at the close of the century by the mystic astronomer Zimmermann, who died on the eve of embarkation for the New World in 1693. No hermit in the African desert was ever more sincere in his flight from the world's temptations or more devout in his com- munion with the Divine Spirit than Kelpius in his dingy cavern by the banks of the Wissahickon, then beyond the area of settlement. His anxious soul, shedding a mystic brightness upon the gloom of the wilderness, long pleaded in vain to be released from the bonds of the flesh: Tormenting love, sweetest pain, delay, O delay not longer the blessed day ! Speed on the time, let the hour come! Remember the covenant graciously sealed. In faith, to the whole world be it revealed!^ ' See Bibliography. " Ode IX. Ein verliebtes Girren der trostlosen Seele in der Morgenddmtnetung.