Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go.
Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away."
But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
1858.
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.
In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title of the poem.
WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late, Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight, Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."
Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer- morn, With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born, And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea of corn.
Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided creeks between, And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-- A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.
Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led, And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.
All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land- breeze died, The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied, And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.
Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand; Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.
And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore, "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before; To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more."
All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.
There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.
From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast, On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed, Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast.
There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind "All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find!
"In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!-- Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!-- Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord!
"In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin!
Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!"
When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear.
The ear of God was open to His servant's last request; As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed, And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest.
There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead; In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read; And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead.
And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall, With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall, When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall!
1808.
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.
"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER.
FAR away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!
Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.
Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;-- And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score!
Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that he lived, we know, And left the cast of a double head In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.
For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at.
A snake with two beads, lurking so near!
Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!
Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!
How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, The terrible double-ganger heard In leafy rustle or whir of bird!
Think what a zest it gave to the sport, In berry-time, of the younger sort, As over pastures blackberry-twined, Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover's arm; And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay.
Far and wide the tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled.
The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by.
Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?
Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain, The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake One in body and two in will, The Amphisbaena is living still!"
1859.
MABEL MARTIN.
A HARVEST IDYL.
Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way, where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for the collapse of the hideous persecution.
The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in the verses which constitute Part I.