Part 4

II. THE PAUPER WITCH OF GRAFTON

Now that they've got it settled whose I be, I'm going to tell them something they won't like: They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it. Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting To make a present of me to each other. They don't dispose me, either one of them, To spare them any trouble. Double trouble's Always the witch's motto anyway. I'll double theirs for both of them--you watch me. They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over, That is, if facts is what they want to go by. They set a lot (now don't they?) by a record Of Arthur Amy's having once been up For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren. I could have told them any time this twelvemonth The Arthur Amy I was married to Couldn't have been the one they say was up In Warren at March Meeting for the reason He wa'n't but fifteen at the time they say. The Arthur Amy I was married to Voted the only times he ever voted, Which wasn't many, in the town of Wentworth. One of the times was when 'twas in the warrant To see if the town wanted to take over The tote road to our clearing where we lived. I'll tell you who'd remember--Heman Lapish. Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine. So now they've dragged it through the law courts once I guess they'd better drag it through again. Wentworth and Warren's both good towns to live in, Only I happen to prefer to live In Wentworth from now on; and when all's said, Right's right, and the temptation to do right When I can hurt someone by doing it Has always been too much for me, it has. I know of some folks that'd be set up At having in their town a noted witch: But most would have to think of the expense That even I would be. They ought to know That as a witch I'd often milk a bat And that'd be enough to last for days. It'd make my position stronger, think, If I was to consent to give some sign To make it surer that I was a witch? It wa'n't no sign, I s'pose, when Mallice Huse Said that I took him out in his old age And rode all over everything on him Until I'd had him worn to skin and bones. And if I'd left him hitched unblanketed In front of one Town Hall, I'd left him hitched In front of every one in Grafton County. Some cried shame on me not to blanket him, The poor old man. It would have been all right If some one hadn't said to gnaw the posts He stood beside and leave his trade mark on them, So they could recognize them. Not a post That they could hear tell of was scarified. They made him keep on gnawing till he whined. Then that same smarty someone said to look-- He'd bet Huse was a cribber and had gnawed The crib he slept in--and as sure's you're born They found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed, All four of them to splinters. What did that prove? Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching posts He said he had besides. Because a horse Gnaws in the stable ain't no proof to me He don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too. But everybody took it for a proof. I was a strapping girl of twenty then. The smarty someone who spoiled everything Was Arthur Amy. You know who he was. That was the way he started courting me. He never said much after we were married, But I mistrusted he was none too proud Of having interfered in the Huse business. I guess he found he got more out of me By having me a witch. Or something happened To turn him round. He got to saying things To undo what he'd done and make it right, Like, "No, she ain't come back from kiting yet. Last night was one of her nights out. She's kiting. She thinks when the wind makes a night of it She might as well herself." But he liked best To let on he was plagued to death with me: If anyone had seen me coming home Over the ridgepole, 'stride of a broomstick, As often as he had in the tail of the night, He guessed they'd know what he had to put up with. Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enough Off from the house as far as we could keep And from barn smells you can't wash out of ploughed ground With all the rain and snow of seven years; And I don't mean just skulls of Roger's Rangers On Moosilauke, but woman signs to man, Only bewitched so I would last him longer. Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall, I made him gather me wet snow berries On slippery rocks beside a waterfall. I made him do it for me in the dark. And he liked everything I made him do. I hope if he is where he sees me now He's so far off he can't see what I've come to. You _can_ come down from everything to nothing. All is, if I'd a-known when I was young And full of it, that this would be the end, It doesn't seem as if I'd had the courage To make so free and kick up in folks' faces. I might have, but it doesn't seem as if.

AN EMPTY THREAT

I stay; But it isn't as if There wasn't always Hudson's Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade.

I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Crosslegged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell.

His name's Joe, Alias John, And between what he doesn't know And won't tell About where Henry Hudson's gone, I can't say he's much help; But we get on.

The seal yelp On an ice cake. It's not men by some mistake?

No, There's not a soul For a wind-break Between me and the North Pole--

Except always John-Joe, My French Indian Esquimaux, And he's off setting traps, In one himself perhaps.

Give a head shake Over so much bay Thrown away In snow and mist That doesn't exist, I was going to say, For God, man or beast's sake, Yet does perhaps for all three.

Don't ask Joe What it is to him. It's sometimes dim What it is to me, Unless it be It's the old captain's dark fate Who failed to find or force a strait In its two-thousand-mile coast; And his crew left him where he failed, And nothing came of all he sailed.

It's to say, "You and I" To such a ghost, "You and I Off here With the dead race of the Great Auk!" And, "Better defeat almost, If seen clear, Than life's victories of doubt That need endless talk talk To make them out."

A FOUNTAIN, A BOTTLE, A DONKEY'S EARS AND SOME BOOKS

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain In Dalton that would some day make his fortune. There'd been some Boston people out to see it: And experts said that deep down in the mountain The mica sheets were big as plate glass windows. He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman, The early Mormons made a settlement And built a stone baptismal font outdoors-- But Smith, or some one, called them off the mountain To go West to a worse fight with the desert. You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font. Well, take me there."

"Some day I will."

"Today."

"Huh, that old bath-tub, what is that to see? Let's talk about it."

"Let's go see the place."

"To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer, And both of our united strengths, to do it."

"You've lost it, then?"

"Not so but I can find it. No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it. The mountain may have shifted since I saw it In eighty-five."

"As long ago as that?"

"If I remember rightly, it had sprung A leak and emptied then. And forty years Can do a good deal to bad masonry. You won't see any Mormon swimming in it. But you have said it, and we're off to find it. Old as I am, I'm going to let myself Be dragged by you all over everywhere--"

"I thought you were a guide."

"I am a guide, And that's why I can't decently refuse you."

We made a day of it out of the world, Ascending to descend to reascend. The old man seriously took his bearings, And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted, Or stained by vegetation from above, A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

"Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain, At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle."

"I won't accept the substitute. It's empty."

"So's everything."

"I want my fountain."

"I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty. And anyway this tells me where I am."

"Hadn't you long suspected where you were?"

"You mean miles from that Mormon settlement? Look here, you treat your guide with due respect If you don't want to spend the night outdoors. I vow we must be near the place from where The two converging slides, the avalanches, On Marshall, look like donkey's ears. We may as well see that and save the day."

"Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?"

"For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature? You don't like nature. All you like is books. What signify a donkey's ears and bottle, However natural? Give you your books! Well then, right here is where I show you books. Come straight down off this mountain just as fast As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet. It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather."

"Be ready," I thought, "for almost anything."

We struck a road I didn't recognize, But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes In dust once more. We followed this a mile, Perhaps, to where it ended at a house I didn't know was there. It was the kind To bring me to for broad-board panelling. I never saw so good a house deserted.

"Excuse me if I ask you in a window That happens to be broken," Davis said. "The outside doors as yet have held against us. I want to introduce you to the people Who used to live here. They were Robinsons. You must have heard of Clara Robinson, The poetess who wrote the book of verses And had it published. It was all about The posies on her inner window sill, And the birds on her outer window sill, And how she tended both, or had them tended: She never tended anything herself. She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her whole Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed. I'll show you how she had her sills extended To entertain the birds and hold the flowers. Our business first's up attic with her books."

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass Through a house stripped of everything Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems. Books, I should say!--if books are what is needed. A whole edition in a packing-case, That, overflowing like a horn of plenty, Or like the poetess's heart of love, Had spilled them near the window toward the light, Where driven rain had wet and swollen them. Enough to stock a village library-- Unfortunately all of one kind, though. They had been brought home from some publisher And taken thus into the family. Boys and bad hunters had known what to do With stone and lead to unprotected glass: Shatter it inward on the unswept floors. How had the tender verse escaped their outrage? By being invisible for what it was, Or else by some remoteness that defied them To find out what to do to hurt a poem. Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book, To send it sailing out the attic window Till it caught the wind, and, opening out its covers, Tried to improve on sailing like a tile By flying like a bird (silent in flight, But all the burden of its body song), Only to tumble like a stricken bird, And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved. Books were not thrown irreverently about. They simply lay where some one now and then, Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet And left it lying where it fell rejected. Here were all those the poetess's life Had been too short to sell or give away.

"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three?"

"Take all you want. Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh In virgin wrapper from deep in the box, And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness. He read in one and I read in another, Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering The small book in my pocket. It was there. The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven At having eased her heart of one more copy-- Legitimately. My demand upon her, Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug. In time she would be rid of all her books.

I WILL SING YOU ONE-O

It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing the tower Would name the hour And tell me whether To call it day (Though not yet light) And give up sleep. The snow fell deep With the hiss of spray; Two winds would meet, One down one street, One down another, And fight in a smother Of dust and feather. I could not say, But feared the cold Had checked the pace Of the tower clock By tying together Its hands of gold Before its face.

Then came one knock! A note unruffled Of earthly weather, Though strange and muffled. The tower said, "One!" And then a steeple. They spoke to themselves And such few people As winds might rouse From sleeping warm (But not unhouse). They left the storm That struck _en masse_ My window glass Like a beaded fur. In that grave One They spoke of the sun And moon and stars, Saturn and Mars And Jupiter. Still more unfettered, They left the named And spoke of the lettered, The sigmas and taus Of constellations. They filled their throats With the furthest bodies To which man sends his Speculation, Beyond which God is; The cosmic motes Of yawning lenses. Their solemn peals Were not their own: They spoke for the clock With whose vast wheels Theirs interlock.

In that grave word Uttered alone The utmost star Trembled and stirred, Though set so far Its whirling frenzies Appear like standing In one self station. It has not ranged, And save for the wonder Of once expanding To be a nova, It has not changed To the eye of man On planets over Around and under It in creation Since man began To drag down man And nation nation.

FRAGMENTARY BLUE

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)-- Though some savants make earth include the sky; And blue so far above us comes so high, It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

IN A DISUSED GRAVEYARD

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say: "The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme, Yet can't help marking all the time How no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever And tell the stones: Men hate to die And have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie.

DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

TO E. T.

I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of you,

I might not have the chance I missed in life Through some delay, and call you to your face First soldier, and then poet, and then both, Who died a soldier-poet of your race.

I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained-- And one thing more that was not then to say: The Victory for what it lost and gained.

You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day The war seemed over more for you than me, But now for me than you--the other way.

How over, though, for even me who knew The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, If I was not to speak of it to you And see you pleased once more with words of mine?

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

THE RUNAWAY

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, "Whose colt?" A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey, Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes. "I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow. He isn't winter-broken. It isn't play With the little fellow at all. He's running away. I doubt if even his mother could tell him, 'Sakes, It's only weather.' He'd think she didn't know! Where is his mother? He can't be out alone." And now he comes again with clatter of stone, And mounts the wall again with whited eyes And all his tail that isn't hair up straight. He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies. "Whoever it is that leaves him out so late, When other creatures have gone to stall and bin, Ought to be told to come and take him in."

THE AIM WAS SONG

Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong: It hadn't found the place to blow; It blew too hard--the aim was song. And listen--how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth, And held it long enough for north To be converted into south, And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note, The wind the wind had meant to be-- A little through the lips and throat. The aim was song--the wind could see.

STOPPING BY WOODS ON SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. _Once_, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths--and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

BLUE-BUTTERFLY DAY

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

THE ONSET

Always the same, when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods, and with a song It shall not make again all winter long Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground, I almost stumble looking up and round, As one who overtaken by the end Gives up his errand, and lets death descend Upon him where he is, with nothing done To evil, no important triumph won, More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side: I know that winter death has never tried The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap In long storms an undrifted four feet deep As measured against maple, birch and oak, It cannot check the peeper's silver croak; And I shall see the snow all go down hill In water of a slender April rill That flashes tail through last year's withered brake And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake. Nothing will be left white but here a birch, And there a clump of houses with a church.

TO EARTHWARD

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things, The flow of--was it musk From hidden grapevine springs Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache From sprays of honeysuckle That when they're gathered shake Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those Seemed strong when I was young; The petal of the rose It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred I take away my hand From leaning on it hard In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength To feel the earth as rough To all my length.

GOOD-BYE AND KEEP COLD

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. (We made it secure against being, I hope, By setting it out on a northerly slope.) No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below." I have to be gone for a season or so. My business awhile is with different trees, Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, And such as is done to their wood with an axe-- Maples and birches and tamaracks. I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard's arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God.

TWO LOOK AT TWO