Classic Poem

Wouldst thou know the soul of silence?
Go to the untrodden woods;
Lift thy voice aloud, and listen
To the answering solitudes.
Wouldst thou have deep confirmation
That a God indeed doth reign —
Feel the awful, unseen Presence?
Go, and never doubt again.

Far in a Canadian forest,
Underneath a spreading oak,
Ere the solitude had echo'd
To the woodman's cheerful stroke;
Ere the branching elm had fallen,
And the cedar and the pine,
Ever since Time's birth, had blossom'd
Undisturbed by man's design;

Here some power-expatriated
Sons of Scotia, sad, forlorn,
Met, their father's God to worship,
On a quiet Sabbath morn.
Poverty, perchance oppression,
Drove them to the woods to dwell,
Leaving half their hearts behind them
'Mong the hills they loved so well.

Want, the mother of affliction,
Had been their familiar long;
Yet to battle with the forest
Hearts they brought both stout and strong.
Some, the soldiers of affection,
Soldiers of the noblest kind,
Came to seek a home for parents,
Left in poverty behind.

Some, from wives and children parted,
Hope allaying their distress,
For she whisper'd she would find them
Freedom in the wilderness.
Some were creatures of misfortune;
Of tyranny and wrong were some;
Yet their hearts were griev'd within them,
Parting from their childhood's home.

'Mid this group of humble beings
There was one old grey-haired man
Who was loved, yea, as a father —
Round him all the children ran.
He had look'd upon the world,
Yea, for three-score years and ten,
Had still in his heart unbounded
Love for all his fellow-men.

Things for which the world is struggling,
Honor, riches, power, and pelf,
Were to him but moping shadows
Groping in the cell of Self.
Love had lent him strength to wrestle
Even with the storms of fate;
In his heart he bore no hatred,
Only to the soul of Hate.

Yea, he would have been a poet
Had not penury, the while,
And a sense of duty, doom'd him
To a life of ceaseless toil.
Yet by times the God within him
Would lift up His awful voice,
And the melodies imprison'd
Burst their fetters and rejoice.

And his pent-up human feelings
Ever and anon would start
Into words which found an entrance
Even to the roughest heart.
Surely 'twas the God of Jacob
Honor'd this old man to raise,
Here in Nature's green cathedral,
To His name the song of praise.

In that awful leafy temple
Not a sound the silence broke,
Save his voice in prayer ascending
From the shadow of the oak.
Their full souls to his responded,
As to some old prophet seer;
Anxiously they circled round him,
Hush'd their very hearts to hear.

The Address

" We are met, belov'd friends, in this temple of green,
A fit place to worship the awful Unseen,
Who guided us safely across the great deep,
And hushed the wild waves and their billows to sleep.
In the city and mart man may not recollect
To ask the Great Father to guide and protect:
Too often we've seen him bent under a load —
A burden of guilt — as he travel'd life's road;
But here in the forest, with danger beset,
Ah! dead must the heart be that e'er can forget.

" We have left a loved land where we suffer'd sore wrong,
But in these wild forests we'll sing a new song.
Our wrongs we'll forget; let it now be our care
To cherish the virtue which still blossoms there.
Our hearts to affection can only give way
When we think of our homes and the hills far away.
Ah! yes, I had hoped to be laid down at last,
When life, with its toils and its troubles, had pass'd,
Beside the old church where the lone willows weep,
Where our friends and our kindred all silently sleep.
My time must be short, and I well could have borne
By injustice and wrong that my heart should be torn,
But oh! it has been the long wish of my life
To help man to shake off deception and strife.
I'm sick and I'm weary of havoc and hate,
Let love be the genius, the soul of this state!
In peace let us found a community here;
We'll govern by love, not by hatred and fear.
I thank you, my children, for that deep Amen,
And I'll die with the hope that you'll all be true men.

" Then on! on! ye brave, to the battle of peace!
And hasten the time when men's sorrows shall cease.
The ax is your weapon, the forest your foe,
And joy, peace and plenty come forth at each blow.
Ah, poor is the triumph the warrior feels!
Humanity weeps while his work she reveals.
How long shall the demons of ruin and wrath
With bleeding hearts cover the war-wasted path?
How long shall Oppression her bloody lash wave,
And the poor tool of Mammon a brother enslave?

" I see in the future a sweet smiling plain,
With green pastures waving, and rich golden grain.
What will they avail you, if folly and sin,
Or greed, blight the flow'rs of affection within?
What will it avail, tho' your herds may increase,
If still ye are strangers to virtue and peace?
For virtue alone is the soul of a state —
Without it we vainly are wealthy and great.
Ah! yes, there is treasure more precious than gold,
Not found in the markets — a treasure untold.
The heart longs for something on which to rely,
A something the wealth of the world cannot buy;
A something which beauty, which virtue foreshows,
Which genius announces, but cannot disclose;
A something above the dark regions of sense,
Akin to the spirit which beckons it hence.
And mind, my lov'd children, that, go where we will,
There danger and death surely follow us still;
There are shafts in the quiver of fortune and fate,
That, say what we will, we can ne'er feel elate.
Be we rich, be we poor, there's a death hanging o'er us,
An awful eternity stretching before us;
We're hurriedly wafted on this wave of time
To the great mighty ocean that's stretching sublime;
And if the rude tempest and storms overtake us,
Aye mind there is One that will never forsake us!
There's only one Pilot can bid the storm cease,
And bring us at last to the haven of peace;
Sublime was the sorrow His human heart bore,
That headaches and heartaches might know us no more.

" Then oh! let us live so that at the great day
When the framework of Nature shall burst and give way,
When 'midst the great ruin the Judge will descend,
Eternity with Him, and time at an end;
Oh! then we may enter and taste of the joy
Which time, death and sorrow can never destroy;
Oh! then may we look back from that happy sphere
With joy to the Sabbath we first worshipt here,
Communing with angels, with Christ for a Friend,
And a Sabbath of glory which never shall end. "

And many years have pass'd away —
The forest all is torn,
Save the old oak, in memory left
Of that sweet Sabbath morn.
And some are with the living still,
And some are with the dead,
Who treasured up within their hearts
The words the old man said.

His work still lives, tho' he is laid
Within the quiet grave;
The old oak is the monument
Which over him doth wave.
Some one has graven on its trunk,
Who holds his memory dear:
" Stranger, this is a sacred spot;
A Christian slumbers here. "