PROLOGUE.
To-night we strive to read, as we may best, This city, like an ancient palimpsest; And bring to light, upon the blotted page, The mournful record of an earlier age, That, pale and half effaced, lies hidden away Beneath the fresher writing of to-day.
Rise, then, O buried city that hast been; Rise up, rebuilded in the painted scene, And let our curious eyes behold once more The pointed gable and the pent-house door, The Meeting-house with leaden-latticed panes, The narrow thoroughfares, the crooked lanes! Rise, too, ye shapes and shadows of the Past, Rise from your long-forgotten graves at last; Let us behold your faces, let us hear The words ye uttered in those days of fear Revisit your familiar haunts again,-- The scenes of triumph, and the scenes of pain And leave the footprints of your bleeding feet Once more upon the pavement of the street! Nor let the Historian blame the Poet here, If he perchance misdate the day or year, And group events together, by his art, That in the Chronicles lie far apart; For as the double stars, though sundered far, Seem to the naked eye a single star, So facts of history, at a distance seen, Into one common point of light convene.
"Why touch upon such themes ?" perhaps some friend May ask, incredulous; "and to what good end?
Why drag again into the light of day The errors of an age long passed away ?" I answer: "For the lessons that they teach: The tolerance of opinion and of speech.
Hope, Faith, and Charity remain,--these three; And greatest of them all is Charity." Let us remember, if these words be true, That unto all men Charity is due; Give what we ask; and pity, while we blame, Lest we become copartners in the shame, Lest we condemn, and yet ourselves partake, And persecute the dead for conscience' sake.
Therefore it is the author seeks and strives To represent the dead as in their lives, And lets at times his characters unfold Their thoughts in their own language, strong and bold; He only asks of you to do the like; To hear hint first, and, if you will, then strike.
ACT I.
SCENE I.-- Sunday afternoon.

The interior of the Meeting-house.
On the pulpit, an hour-glass; below, a box for contributions.
JOHN NORTON in the pulpit.

GOVERNOR ENDICOTT in a canopied seat, attended by four halberdiers.

The congregation singing.
The Lord descended from above, And bowed the heavens high; And underneath his feet He cast The darkness of the sky.
On Cherubim and Seraphim Right royally He rode, And on the wings of mighty winds Came flying all abroad.
NORTON (rising and turning the hourglass on the pulpit).
I heard a great voice from the temple saying Unto the Seven Angels, Go your ways; Pour out the vials of the wrath of God Upon the earth.

And the First Angel went And poured his vial on the earth; and straight There fell a noisome and a grievous sore On them which had the birth-mark of the Beast, And them which worshipped and adored his image.
On us hath fallen this grievous pestilence.
There is a sense of terror in the air; And apparitions of things horrible Are seen by many; from the sky above us The stars fall; and beneath us the earth quakes! The sound of drums at midnight from afar, The sound of horsemen riding to and fro, As if the gates of the invisible world Were opened, and the dead came forth to warn us,-- All these are omens of some dire disaster Impending over us, and soon to fall, Moreover, in the language of the Prophet, Death is again come up into our windows, To cut off little children from without, And young men from the streets.