Classic Poem

Thus flies the hour.
Meanwhile, O Muse, withdraw awhile apart,
And note yon figure bending in the woods.
It is the dame of Oakland gathering herbs —
Here plucking liverwort, and there the rank
Hot stems of penny-royal — and, anon,
With crooked fingers, in the easy mould,
Digging the sinuous snake-root, and what else
Her curious knowledge finds. In bundles tied,
These all must at her odorous ceiling hang,
To dry mid swinging sheaves of various mint,
Plucked from the garden and the brook; with sage
Savouring of Christmas, and wild chamomile,
With bitterer tansy, and the virtuous barks
Of elm and sassafras; with much beside,
Shedding perpetual perfume round the joists,
Forgot, or to the muse unknown. She kneels;
And, as she gathers, mumbles words, unheard,
Whose import none may know except those forms
Invisible which bend the attentive ear,
And catch the faintest breathings of the soul;
Interpreting the murmurs of a child,
The honied accents swarming at its lips,
And the low blended, toothless sounds of age.
Not long she bends when, with a tongue uncouth
The round Distiller, all a-glow with heat,
Comes fuming like his still; for he hath strode
Throughout the morn across his stretching lands,
Armed with the heavy hickory which he wears,
To note if, in the all-exulting hour,
A foot should dare to trespass on his grounds.
Thus, ever, the bad man is seen abroad
Grudging the innocent joy, which others feel,
Impossible to him; while Jealousy,
Within the envious precincts of his heart,
Suggests the wicked act, and, with a smile,
Gloats o'er the cruelty ere it is done.
The fairest landscape may not mould a heart;
A niggard in his palace still is mean;
And cruelty may native be to scenes
Whose loveliness might move another's tears
See how his set teeth grind in base delight,
And how he strikes from side to side, and beats
A fancied culprit at each blow! He speaks: —
" What bring'st thou, hag, to trespass on these grounds?
What stealest thou within these woods forbid? "
To which the woman, rising on her staff: —
" I gather simples that thou know'st not of:
Here's this to cool, and here is this which gives
A generous heat when ague numbs the heart.
Oh, I can find all plants, and roots, and barks,
Which Nature's storehouse yields. I know them all;
And, better than your school-diploma'd leech,
Can I prescribe the antidote of ills
Which fire or freeze the blood; but in my art,
I do avow 'fore Heaven, I know no power
Of herb to cool a feverish temper vile,
Or thaw the starving ague of a soul! "
To which the man, with lifted cane, replies: —
" Hence, with a bridle on thy tongue, or else
Beware the weight of this! " When thus the dame,
Shaking her skinny finger o'er her staff: —
" Once came a beggar to a rich man's gate,
Asking the crumbs which from his table fell;
He was refused — perchance thou know'st the rest.
These simples, to the fulness of thy land,
Are less than were the crumbs beneath that table
All these untended here, self-planted, grow
From year to year, and custom's long consent
Hath yielded them to serve the general use.
I do not trespass, and I do not steal;
Nor shalt thou say it unrebuked. These grounds,
They are not thine save by a legal lie,
Stolen by trick, or bought with devil's blood —
I mean the poison dripping from yon still —
And might the wronged man from his coffin rise,
And, with the widow and the orphan, tell
The baseness of thy cunning, the dull ear
Of common justice should be stunned and pained,
And the loud public tongue cry out thy shame,
And retribution, like a bolt of fire
Amid the thunder, fall. " E'en as she speaks,
She seems to rise above her wonted height;
Her gray locks falling take the passing breeze,
Her eyes indignant flame, and on her lip
Scorn sits supreme, and mocks the lifted cane.
Meanwhile the blood to the distiller's brow
Mounts with swift madness, and his whole broad face
Burns like a furnace by the bellows blown.
" Hence, witch! " he cries; and reeling from his aim,
With a loud shriek of oaths, he strikes the air,
And striking falls, foaming at mouth, convulsed.
The apoplectic blood, inflamed, hath drowned
His brain; and there, with horrible distort
Of face and frame, he clutching tears the ground.
These are rough touches, but they give the life,
The scars and moles which make the picture true
And thus he lies until a sauntering group,
Which presently comes by, in wonder stops;
And takes the fallen man in charge, and hears
Him writhing home. The dame, with musing voice,
Speaks as they go, and they may hear who will —
" Twice hath the mad ox grovelled in the dust,
Dragged by the dogs of anger; when again
They take him to the earth, he shall not rise. "
And now once more she kneels above her task,
And, digging, traces the eccentric root.