THE NEIGHBORS

by Theodosia Garrison 

     At first cock-crow

     The ghosts must go

     Back to their quiet graves below.

Against the distant striking of the clock
I heard the crowing cock,
     And I arose and threw the window wide;
          Long, long before the setting of the moon,
          And yet I knew they must be passing soon—
     My neighbors who had died—
Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait
Beyond the churchyard gate.

I leaned far out and waited—all the world
Was like a thing impearled,
     Mysterious and beautiful and still:
          The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,
          Our little village slept in Quaker gray,
     And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;
And then far off I heard the cock—and then
My neighbors passed again.

At first it seemed a white cloud, nothing more,
Slow drifting by my door,
     Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;
          Then suddenly each separate face I knew,
          The tender lovers drifting two and two,
     Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,
And little children—one whose hand held still
An earth-grown daffodil.

And here I saw one pausing for a space
To lift a wistful face
     Up to a certain window where there dreamed
          A little brood left motherless; and there
          One turned to where the unploughed fields lay bare;
     And others lingering passed—but one there seemed
So over glad to haste, she scarce could wait
To reach the churchyard gate!

The farrier's little maid who loved too well
And died—I may not tell
      How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,
           With backward glances lingered as they went;
           Only upon one face was all content,
      A sorrow comforted—a peace untold.
I watched them through the swinging gate—the dawn
Stayed till the last had gone.

A BALLAD OF HALLOWE'EN

by Theodosia Garrison

All night the wild wind on the heath  
Whistled its song of vague alarms;  
All night in some mad dance of death  
The poplars tossed their naked arms.

 

Mignon Isa hath left her bed  
And bared her shoulders to the blast;  
The long procession of the dead  
Stared at her as it passed.

"Oh, there, methinks, my mother smiled,  
And there my father walks forlorn,  
And there the little nameless child  
That was the parish scorn.

"And there my olden comrades move,  
And there my sister smiles apart,  
But nowhere is the fair, false love  
That bent and broke my heart.

"Oh, false in life, oh, false in death,  
Wherever thy mad spirit be,  
Could it not come this night," she saith,  
"And keep tryst with me?"

Mignon Isa has turned alone,  
Bitter the pain and long the years;  
The moonlight on the old gravestone  
Was warmer than her tears.

All night the wild wind on the heath  
Whistled its song of vague alarms;  
All night in some mad dance of death  
The poplars tossed their naked arms.

A SALEM MOTHER

by Theodosia Garrison

I

They whisper at my very gate,
These clacking gossips every one,
"We saw them in the wood of late,
Her and the widow's son;
The horses at the forge may wait,
The wool may go unspun."

I spread the food he loves the best,
I light the lamp when day is done,
Yet still he stays another's guest—
Oh, my one son, my son.
I would it burned in mine own breast
The spell he may not shun.

She hath bewitched him with her eyes.
(No goodly maid hath eyes as bright.)
Pale in the morn I watch him rise,
As one who wanders far by night.
The gossips whisper and surmise—
I hide me from the light.

II

Her hair is yellow as the corn,
Her eyes are bluer than the sky;
Behind the casement yester-morn,
I watched her passing by.
My son not yet had broken bread,
Yet from the table did he rise,
She said no word nor turned her head,
What then the spell that bade him stir,
Nor heeding any word I said,
Put by my hands and follow her.

III

He was so strong and wise and good—
Was there no other she might take,
Nor other mothers' hearts to break?

What though she bade the harvest fail,
What though she willed the cattle die,
So my son's soul was spared thereby.

My cattle fill the pasture-land,
The ripe fruit thickens on the tree,
My son, my son is lost to me.

IV

They burned a witch in our town,
On hangman's hill to-day;
And black the ashes drifted down,
Ashes black and grey,
Not white like those o' martyred folk
Whose souls are clean as they.

They burned a witch in our town,
Upon a windy hill,
For that she made the wells sink down
And wrought a young man ill,
The smoke rose black against the sky,
And hangs before it still.

They burned a witch in our town,
And sure they did but right,
And yet I would the rain could drown
That blackened hill from sight,
And some great wind might drive that cloud
'Twixt God and me this night.