The Christian Tourists

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend UnrestGoaded from shore to shore;No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,The leaves of empire o'er.Simple of faith, and bearing in their heartsThe love of man and God,Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,And Scythia's steppes, they trod.

Where the long shadows of the fir and pineIn the night sun are cast,And the deep heart of many a Norland mineQuakes at each riving blast;Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,A baptized Scythian queen,With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,The North and East between!

Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, strayThe classic forms of yore,And beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,And Dian weeps once more;Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds;And Stamboul from the seaLifts her tall minarets over burial-groundsBlack with the cypress-tree.

From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,Following the track of Paul,And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's homeTheir vast, eternal wall;They paused not by the ruins of old time,They scanned no pictures rare,Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountainsclimbThe cold abyss of air!

But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,To haunts where Hunger pined,To kings and courts forgetful of the painsAnd wants of human-kind,Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good,Along their way, like flowers,Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only could,With princes and with powers;

Their single aim the purpose to fulfilOf Truth, from day to day,Simply obedient to its guiding will,They held their pilgrim way.Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and oldWere wasted on their sight,Who in the school of Christ had learned to holdAll outward things aright.

Not less to them the breath of vineyards blownFrom off the Cyprian shore,Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone,That man they valued more.A life of beauty lends to all it seesThe beauty of its thought;And fairest forms and sweetest harmoniesMake glad its way, unsought.

In sweet accordancy of praise and love,The singing waters run;And sunset mountains wear in light aboveThe smile of duty done;Sure stands the promise,--ever to the meekA heritage is given;Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seekThe righteousness of Heaven!