Narrative Poems, part 7, Bay of Seven Islands | Page 4

drew near.?"Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote?Her draught away from a parching throat.
"Take heed," one whispered, "they'll take your cow?For fines, as they took your horse and plough,?And the bed from under you." "Even so,"?She said; "they are cruel as death, I know."
Then on they passed, in the waning day,?Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way;?By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare,?And glimpses of blue sea here and there.
By the meeting-house in Salisbury town,?The sufferers stood, in the red sundown,?Bare for the lash! O pitying Night,?Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight.
With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip?The Salisbury constable dropped his whip.?"This warrant means murder foul and red;?Cursed is he who serves it," he said.
"Show me the order, and meanwhile strike?A blow at your peril!" said Justice Pike.?Of all the rulers the land possessed,?Wisest and boldest was he and best.
He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he met?As man meets man; his feet he set?Beyond his dark age, standing upright,?Soul-free, with his face to the morning light.
He read the warrant: "These convey?From our precincts; at every town on the way?Give each ten lashes." "God judge the brute!?I tread his order under my foot!
"Cut loose these poor ones and let them go;?Come what will of it, all men shall know?No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown,?For whipping women in Salisbury town!"
The hearts of the villagers, half released?From creed of terror and rule of priest,?By a primal instinct owned the right?Of human pity in law's despite.
For ruth and chivalry only slept,?His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept;?Quicker or slower, the same blood ran?In the Cavalier and the Puritan.
The Quakers sank on their knees in praise?And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze?Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed?A golden glory on each bowed head.
The tale is one of an evil time,?When souls were fettered and thought was crime,?And heresy's whisper above its breath?Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!
What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried,?Even woman rebuked and prophesied,?And soft words rarely answered back?The grim persuasion of whip and rack.
If her cry from the whipping-post and jail?Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail,?O woman, at ease in these happier days,?Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways!
How much thy beautiful life may owe?To her faith and courage thou canst not know,?Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreat?She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet.?1883.
SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST.
A TALE for Roman guides to tell?To careless, sight-worn travellers still,?Who pause beside the narrow cell?Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill.
One day before the monk's door came?A beggar, stretching empty palms,?Fainting and fast-sick, in the name?Of the Most Holy asking alms.
And the monk answered, "All I have?In this poor cell of mine I give,?The silver cup my mother gave;?In Christ's name take thou it, and live."
Years passed; and, called at last to bear?The pastoral crook and keys of Rome,?The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair,?Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.
"Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried,?"And let twelve beggars sit thereat."?The beggars came, and one beside,?An unknown stranger, with them sat.
"I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake,?"O stranger; but if need be thine,?I bid thee welcome, for the sake?Of Him who is thy Lord and mine."
A grave, calm face the stranger raised,?Like His who on Gennesaret trod,?Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed,?Whose form was as the Son of God.
"Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?"?And in the hand he lifted up?The Pontiff marvelled to behold?Once more his mother's silver cup.
"Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom?Sweetly among the flowers of heaven.?I am The Wonderful, through whom?Whate'er thou askest shall be given."
He spake and vanished. Gregory fell?With his twelve guests in mute accord?Prone on their faces, knowing well?Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord.
The old-time legend is not vain;?Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul,?Telling it o'er and o'er again?On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall.
Still wheresoever pity shares?Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin,?And love the beggar's feast prepares,?The uninvited Guest comes in.
Unheard, because our ears are dull,?Unseen, because our eyes are dim,?He walks our earth, The Wonderful,?And all good deeds are done to Him.?1883.
BIRCHBROOK MILL.
A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs?Beneath its leaning trees;?That low, soft ripple is its own,?That dull roar is the sea's.
Of human signs it sees alone?The distant church spire's tip,?And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,?The white sail of a ship.
No more a toiler at the wheel,?It wanders at its will;?Nor dam nor pond is left to tell?Where once was Birchbrook mill.
The timbers of that mill have fed?Long since a farmer's fires;?His doorsteps are the stones that ground?The harvest of his sires.
Man trespassed here; but Nature lost?No right of her domain;?She waited, and she brought the old?Wild beauty back again.
By day the sunlight through the leaves?Falls on its moist, green sod,?And wakes the violet bloom of spring?And