Life triumphed over many-weaponed Death. 
Sorrow and toil and the wilderness thwarted their stout invasion;
But with the ship that sailed again went no retreating soul! 
Stubborn, unvanquished, clinging to the skirts of Hope,
They kept their narrow foothold on the land,
And the ship sailed home for more. 
With yearlong striving they fought their way into the forest;
Their axes echoed where I sit, a score of miles from the sea. 
Slowly, slowly the wilderness yielded
To smiling grass-plots and clearings of yellow corn;
And while the logs of their cabins were still moist
With odorous sap, they set upon the hill
The shrine of liberty for man’s mind,
And by it the shrine of liberty for man’s soul,
The school-house and the church.

The apple-tree by the wall sheds its blossom about me—­
A shower of petals of light upon darkness. 
From Nature’s brimming cup I drink a thousand scents;
At noon the wizard sun stirs the hot soil under the pines. 
I take the top stone of the wall in my hands
And the sun in my heart;
I feel the rippling land extend to right and left,
Bearing up a receptive surface to my uncertain feet;
I clamber up the hill and beyond the grassy sweep;
I encounter a chaos of tumbled rocks. 
Piles of shadow they seem, huddling close to the land. 
Here they are scattered like sheep,
Or like great birds at rest,
There a huge block juts from the giant wave of the hill. 
At the foot of the aged pines the maiden’s moccasins
Track the sod like the noiseless sandals of Spring. 
Out of chinks in the wall delicate grasses wave,
As beauty grew out of the crannies of these hard souls.

Joyously, gratefully, after their long wrestling
With the bitter cold and the harsh white winter,
They heard the step of Spring on the edge of melting snow-drifts;
Gladly, with courage that flashed from their life-beaten souls,
As the fire-sparks fly from the hammered stone,
They hailed the fragrant arbutus;
Its sweetness trailed beside the path that they cut through the forest,
And they gave it the name of their ship Mayflower. 
     Beauty was at their feet, and their eyes beheld it;
The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it. 
But ever as they saw the budding spring,
Ever as they cleared the stubborn field,
Ever as they piled the heavy stones,
In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring;
They raised their hardened hands above the earth,
And beheld the walls that are not built of stone,
The portals opened by angels whose garments are of light;
And beyond the radiant walls of living stones
They dreamed vast meadows and hills of fadeless green.