Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 295=375.= the Quaker's Creed
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Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought That moved his soul, the creed his fathers taught.
One faith alone, so broad that all mankind Within themselves its secret witness find, The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind,
The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, The polished Penn, and Cromwell's Ironside.
As still in Hemskerck's Quaker meeting, face By face, in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor, and fine ancestral grace,
Sat in close contrast,—the clipt-headed churl, Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl, By skirt of silk and periwig in curl!
For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove Made all men equal, none could rise above, Nor sink below, that level of God's love.
So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, Pastorius, to the manners of the town
Added the freedom of the woods, and sought The bookless wisdom by experience taught, And learned to love his new-found home, while not
Forgetful of the old; the seasons went Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent Of their own calm and measureless content.
Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing His song of welcome to the Western spring, And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing.
And when the miracle of autumn came, And all the woods with many-colored flame Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame,
Burned unconsumed, a voice without a sound Spake to him from each kindled bush around And made the strange, new landscape holy ground.
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=Albert Pike, 1809-.= (Manual, p. 523.)
From "Lines on the Rocky Mountains."