In human form with mediatorial power,
Remembers Calvary, and hails the hour
When, by the Almighty Father's high decree,
The utmost North to him shall bow the knee,
And, won by love, an untamed rebel race
Kiss the victorious sceptre of His grace.
Then to His eye, whose instant glance pervades
Heaven's heights, earth's circle, hell's profoundest shades,
Is there a group more lovely than those three
Night-watching pilgrims on the lonely sea?
Or to His ear, that gathers in one sound
The voices of adoring worlds around,
Comes there a breath of more delightful praise
Than the faint notes His poor disciples raise,
Ere on the treacherous main they sink to rest,
Secure, as leaning on their Master's breast?

They sleep; but memory wakes, and dreams array
Night in a lively masquerade of day;

The land they seek, the land they leave behind,
Meet on mid-ocean in the plastic mind:

One brings forsaken home and friends so nigh,

That tears in slumber swell the unconscious eye;
The other opens, with prophetic view,

Perils, which e'en their fathers never knew

(Though schooled by suffering, long inured to toil,
Outcasts and exiles from their natal soil) ;—

Strange scenes, strange men; untold, untried distress;
Pain, hardships, famine, cold, and nakedness;
Diseases; death in every hideous form,

On shore, at sea, by fire, by flood, by storm;

Wild beasts and wilder men :-unmoved with fear,
Health, comfort, safety, life, they count not dear,
May they but hope a Saviour's love to show,
And warn one spirit from eternal woe!

Nor will they faint; nor can they strive in vain,
Since thus to live is Christ, to die is gain.

'Tis morn: the bathing moon her lustre shrouds;
Wide o'er the east impends an arch of clouds
That spans the ocean; while the infant dawn
Peeps through the portal o'er the liquid lawn,
That ruffled by an April gale appears,

Between the gloom and splendour of the spheres,
Dark purple as the moorland heath, when rain
Hangs in low vapours o'er the autumnal plain;
Till the full sun, resurgent from the flood,
Looks on the waves and turns them into blood;

But quickly kindling, as his beams aspire,
The lambent billows play in forms of fire.
Where is the vessel?-shining through the light,
Like the white sea-fowl's horizontal flight,
Yonder she wings, and skims, and cleaves her way,
Through refluent foam and iridescent spray.
Lo! on the deck, with patriarchal grace,
Heaven in his bosom opening o'er his face,
Stands Christian David--venerable name!
Bright in the records of celestial fame,
On earth obscure;-like some sequestered star,
That rolls in its Creator's beams afar,
Unseen by man, till telescopic eye,
Sounding the blue abysses of the sky,
Draws forth its hidden beauty into light,
And adds a jewel to the crown of Night.
Though hoary with the multitude of years,
Unshorn of strength, between his young compeers
He towers with faith, whose boundless glance can see
Time's shadows brightening through eternity;
Love,- GOD's own love in his pure breast enshrined;
Love, love to man the magnet of his mind;
Sublimer schemes maturing in his thought

Than ever statesman planned or warrior wrought;
While, with rejoicing tears, and rapturous sighs,
To heaven ascends their morning sacrifice.*

Whence are the pilgrims? whither would they roam?
Greenland their port; Moravia was their home.
Sprung from a race of martyrs-men who bore
The cross on many a Golgotha of yore;
When first Sclavonian tribes the truth received,
And princes at the price of thrones believed;3
When Waldo, flying from the apostate west,*
In German wilds his righteous cause confessed:
When Wickliffe, like a rescuing angel, found
The dungeon where the Word of GOD lay bound,
Unloosed its chains, and led it by the hand,
In its own sunshine through his native land:5
When Huss, the victim of perfidious foes,
To heaven upon a fiery chariot rose;

And ere he vanished, with a prophet's breath,
Foretold the immortal triumphs of his death:

* The names of the three first Moravian missionaries to Greenland were Christian David, Matthew Stach, and Christian Stach.

+ Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons (died 1197), founded the sect of the Waldenses. See note in Appendix.

When Ziska, burning with fanatic zeal,
Exchanged the Spirit's sword for patriot steel,
And through the heart of Austria's thick array
To Tabor's summit stabbed resistless way;
But there (as if transfigured on the spot
The world's Redeemer stood) his rage forgot;
Deposed his arms and trophies in the dust,
Wept like a babe, and placed in GOD his trust,
While prostrate warriors kissed the hallowed ground,
And lay, like slain, in silent ranks around:7
When mild Gregorius, in a lowlier field,—
As brave a witness, as unwont to yield
As Ziska's self, with patient footsteps trod
A path of suffering, like the Son of GOD,
And nobler palms, by meek endurance won,
Than if his sword had blazed from sun to sun;8
Though nature failed him on the racking wheel,
He felt the joys which parted spirits feel;
Rapt into bliss from ecstacy of pain,
Imagination wandered o'er a plain ;—
Fair in the midst, beneath a morning sky,
A tree its ample branches bore on high,
With fragrant bloom, and fruit delicious hung,
While birds beneath the foliage fed and sung;
All glittering to the sun with diamond dew,
O'er sheep and kine a breezy shade it threw;
A lovely boy, the child of hope and prayer,
With crook and shepherd's pipe, was watching there;
At hand three venerable forms were seen,
In simple garb, with apostolic mien,

Who marked the distant fields convulsed with strife,
The guardian Cherubs of that Tree of Life;
Not armed, like Eden's host, with flaming brands,
Alike to friends and foes they stretched their hands
In sign of peace: and while Destruction spread
His path with carnage, welcomed all who fled:
When poor Comenius, with his little flock,
Escaped the wolves, and from the boundary rock
Cast o'er Moravian hills a look of woe,

Saw the green vales expand, the waters flow,
And happier years revolving in his mind,

Caught every sound that murmured on the wind;
As if his eye could never thence depart,

As if his ear were seated in his heart,

And his full soul would thence a passage break,
To leave the body for his country's sake;

While on his knees he poured the fervent prayer,
That GOD would make that martyr-land his care,
And nourish in its ravaged soil a root

Of Gregor's Tree, to bear perennial fruit."

His prayer was heard: that Church, through ages past Assailed and rent by Persecution's blast;

Whose sons no yoke could crush, no burden tire,
Unawed by dungeons, tortures, sword, and fire;
(Less proof against the world's alluring wiles,
Whose frowns have weaker terrors than its smiles ;)
That Church o'erthrown, dispersed, unpeopled, dead,
Oft from the dust of ruin raised her head,
And rallying round her feet, as from their graves,
Her exiled orphans hid in forest-caves;

Where, 'midst the fastnesses of rocks and glens,
Banded like robbers, stealing from their dens,
By night they met, their holiest vows to pay,
As if their deeds were dark, and shunned the day;
While Christ's revilers, in His seamless robe
And parted garments, flaunted round the globe;
From east to west while Priestcraft's banners flew,
And harnessed kings his iron chariot drew:
That Church advanced, triumphant, o'er the ground
Where all her conquering martyrs had been crowned,
Fearless her foes' whole malice to defy,

And worship GOD in liberty-or die :

For truth and conscience oft she poured her blood,
And firmest in the fiercest conflict stood,

Wresting from bigotry the proud control
Claimed o'er the sacred empire of the soul,

Where GOD, the Judge of all, should fill the throne,
And reign, as in His universe, alone.10

'T was thus through centuries she rose and fell; At length victorious seemed the gates of hell; But founded on a rock which cannot move

The eternal rock of her Redeemer's love

That Church, which Satan's legions thought destroyed,
Her name extinct, her place for ever void,

Alive once more, respired her native air,

But found no freedom for the voice of prayer:

Again the cowled oppressor clanked his chains,

Flourished his scourge, and threatened bonds and pains:

(His arm, enfeebled, could no longer kill,

But in his heart he was a murderer still:)

Then Christian David, strengthened from above,

Wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove;

Bold as a lion on his Master's part,
In zeal a Seraph, and a child in heart;
Plucked from the grip of antiquated laws,
(Even as a mother from the felon-jaws.
Of a lean wolf, that bears her babe away,
With courage beyond nature, rends the prey,)
The little remnant of that ancient race:
Far in Lusatian woods they found a place;
There,--where the sparrow builds her busy nest,
And the clime-changing swallow loves to rest,
Thine altar, GOD of hosts!-there still appear
The tribes to worship, unassailed by fear;
Not like their fathers, vexed from age to age
By blatant Bigotry's insensate rage,
Abroad in every place,-in every hour
Awake, alert, and ramping to devour.

No; peaceful as the spot where Jacob slept,
And guard all night the journeying angels kept,
Herrnhut yet stands amidst her sheltered bowers;
The LORD hath set His watch upon her towers! "1
Soon homes, of humble form and structure rude,
Raised sweet society in solitude:

And the lorn traveller there, at fall of night,
Could trace from distant hills the spangled light,
Which now from many a cottage window streamed,
Or in full glory round the chapel beamed;
While hymning voices in the silent shade
Music of all his soul's affection made:

Where through the trackless wilderness erewhile
No hospitable ray was known to smile;
Or if a sudden splendour kindled joy,
'T was but a meteor dazzling to destroy;
While the wood echoed to the hollow owl,
The fox's cry, or wolf's lugubrious howl.
Unwearied as the camel, day by day,

Tracks through unwatered wilds his doleful way,
Yet in his breast a cherished draught retains,
To cool the fervid current in his veins,
While from the sun's meridian realms he brings
The gold and gems of Ethiopian kings;

So Christian David, spending yet unspent,

On many a pilgrimage of mercy went;

Through all their haunts his suffering brethren sought,
And safely to that land of promise brought;
While in his bosom, on the toilsome road,

A secret well of consolation flowed,