Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 2

love's and duty's handmaid still.
Pass with me down the path that winds?Through birches to the open land,?Where, close upon the river strand
You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,?Above whose wall of loosened stones?The sumach lifts its reddening cones,
And the black nightshade's berries shine,?And broad, unsightly burdocks fold?The household ruin, century-old.
Here, in the dim colonial time?Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,?A woman lived, tradition saith,
Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,?And witched and plagued the country-side,?Till at the hangman's hand she died.
Sit with me while the westering day?Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,?And, haply ere yon loitering sail,
That rounds the upper headland, falls?Below Deer Island's pines, or sees?Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees
Rise black against the sinking sun,?My idyl of its days of old,?The valley's legend, shall be told.
II. THE HUSKING.?It was the pleasant harvest-time,?When cellar-bins are closely stowed,?And garrets bend beneath their load,
And the old swallow-haunted barns,--?Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams?Through which the rooted sunlight streams,
And winds blow freshly in, to shake?The red plumes of the roosted cocks,?And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,
Are filled with summer's ripened stores,?Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,?From their low scaffolds to their eaves.
On Esek Harden's oaken floor,?With many an autumn threshing worn,?Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.
And thither came young men and maids,?Beneath a moon that, large and low,?Lit that sweet eve of long ago.
They took their places; some by chance,?And others by a merry voice?Or sweet smile guided to their choice.
How pleasantly the rising moon,?Between the shadow of the mows,?Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!
On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,?On girlhood with its solid curves?Of healthful strength and painless nerves!
And jests went round, and laughs that made?The house-dog answer with his howl,?And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;
And quaint old songs their fathers sung?In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,?Ere Norman William trod their shores;
And tales, whose merry license shook?The fat sides of the Saxon thane,?Forgetful of the hovering Dane,--
Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,?The charms and riddles that beguiled?On Oxus' banks the young world's child,--
That primal picture-speech wherein?Have youth and maid the story told,?So new in each, so dateless old,
Recalling pastoral Ruth in her?Who waited, blushing and demure,?The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.
But still the sweetest voice was mute?That river-valley ever heard?From lips of maid or throat of bird;
For Mabel Martin sat apart,?And let the hay-mow's shadow fall?Upon the loveliest face of all.
She sat apart, as one forbid,?Who knew that none would condescend?To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.
The seasons scarce had gone their round,?Since curious thousands thronged to see?Her mother at the gallows-tree;
And mocked the prison-palsied limbs?That faltered on the fatal stairs,?And wan lip trembling with its prayers!
Few questioned of the sorrowing child,?Or, when they saw the mother die;?Dreamed of the daughter's agony.
They went up to their homes that day,?As men and Christians justified?God willed it, and the wretch had died!
Dear God and Father of us all,?Forgive our faith in cruel lies,--?Forgive the blindness that denies!
Forgive thy creature when he takes,?For the all-perfect love Thou art,?Some grim creation of his heart.
Cast down our idols, overturn?Our bloody altars; let us see?Thyself in Thy humanity!
Young Mabel from her mother's grave?Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,?And wrestled with her fate alone;
With love, and anger, and despair,?The phantoms of disordered sense,?The awful doubts of Providence!
Oh, dreary broke the winter days,?And dreary fell the winter nights?When, one by one, the neighboring lights
Went out, and human sounds grew still,?And all the phantom-peopled dark?Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.
And summer days were sad and long,?And sad the uncompanioned eves,?And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,
And Indian Summer's airs of balm;?She scarcely felt the soft caress,?The beauty died of loneliness!
The school-boys jeered her as they passed,?And, when she sought the house of prayer,?Her mother's curse pursued her there.
And still o'er many a neighboring door?She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,?To guard against her mother's harm!
That mother, poor and sick and lame,?Who daily, by the old arm-chair,?Folded her withered hands in prayer;--
Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,?Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,?When her dim eyes could read no more!
Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept?Her faith, and trusted that her way,?So dark, would somewhere meet the day.
And still her weary wheel went round?Day after day, with no relief?Small leisure have the poor for grief.
IV. THE CHAMPION.?So in the shadow Mabel sits;?Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,?Her smile is sadder than her tears.
But cruel eyes have found her out,?And cruel lips repeat her name,?And taunt her with her mother's shame.
She answered not with railing words,?But drew her apron o'er her face,?And, sobbing, glided from the place.
And only pausing at the door,?Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze?Of one who, in her better days,
Had been her warm and steady friend,?Ere yet her mother's doom had made?Even Esek Harden half afraid.
He felt that mute appeal of tears,?And, starting, with an angry frown,?Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.
"Good neighbors