1688.) PRELUDE.
I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime And milder speech than those brave men's who brought To the ice and iron of our winter time A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught, Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light, Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone, Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.
The garland which his meekness never sought I bring him; over fields of harvest sown With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown, I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.
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