Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and worshipped in silence! 
  Was it for this I have followed the flying feet and the shadow
  Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New England? 
  Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths of corruption 200
  Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of passion;
  Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions of Satan. 
  All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! 
  This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in anger,
  For I have followed too much the heart’s desires and devices, 205
  Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of Baal.[22]
  This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift retribution.”

  So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went, on his errand;
  Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled over pebble
      and shallow,
  Gathering still, as he went, the Mayflowers[23] blooming
      around him, 210
  Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness,
  Children lost in the woods, and covered with leaves in their slumber. 
  “Puritan flowers,” he said, “and the type of Puritan maidens,
  Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of Priscilla! 
  So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the Mayflower of Plymouth, 215
  Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will I take them;
  Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and wither and perish,
  Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver.” 
  So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand;
  Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, 220
  Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind;
  Saw the new-built house, and people at work in a meadow;
  Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla
  Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem,
  Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist, 225
  Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many. 
  Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden,
  Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift
  Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle,
  While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel
      in its motion. 230
  Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,[34]
  Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together,
  Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard,
  Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses. 
  Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem, 235
  She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest,
  Making the humble house and the modest