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 eyes, 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.
III. 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 mine," he sternly said, "This passes harmless mirth or jest; I brook no insult to my guest.
"She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers.
"Let Goody Martin rest in peace; I never knew her harm a fly, And witch or not, God knows--not I.
"I know who swore her life away; And as God lives, I'd not condemn An Indian dog on word of them."
The broadest lands in all the town, The skill to guide, the power to awe, Were Harden's; and his word was law.
None dared withstand him to his face, But one sly maiden spake aside "The little witch is evil-eyed!
"Her mother only killed a cow, Or witched a churn or dairy-pan; But she, forsooth, must charm a man!"
IV. IN THE SHADOW.
Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed The nameless terrors of the wood, And saw, as if a ghost pursued,
Her shadow gliding in the moon; The soft breath of the west-wind gave A chill as from her mother's grave.
How dreary seemed the silent house!
Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare Its windows had a dead man's stare!
And, like a gaunt and spectral hand, The tremulous shadow of a birch Reached out and touched the door's low porch,
As if to lift its latch; hard by, A sudden warning call she beard, The night-cry of a boding bird.
She leaned against the door; her face, So fair, so young, so full of pain, White in the moonlight's silver rain.
The river, on its pebbled rim, Made music such as childhood knew; The door-yard tree was whispered through
By voices such as childhood's ear Had heard in moonlights long ago; And through the willow-boughs below.
She saw the rippled waters shine; Beyond, in waves of shade and light, The hills rolled off into the night.
She saw and heard, but over all A sense of some transforming spell, The shadow of her sick heart fell.
And still across the wooded space The harvest lights of Harden shone, And song and jest and laugh went on.
And he, so gentle, true, and strong, Of men the bravest and the best, Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?