English

HAST seen
The record written of Salah-ud-Deen
The Sultan — how he met, upon a day,
In his own city on the public way,
A woman whom they led to die? The veil
Was stripped from off her weeping fast, and pale
Her shamed cheeks were, and wild her dark fixed eye,
And her lips drawn with terror at the cry
Of the harsh people, and the rugged stones
Borne in their hands to break her, flesh and bones;
For the law stood that sinners such as she
Perish by stoning, and this doom must be;
So went the wan adult'ress to her death.

If you are unskilled in the healing art,
Weeds are just weeds — untoward, ugly things
That choke smooth garden lands, and frowsily
Bedeck the lanes, and pierce the tender flesh
With burrs and daggers, — malice aforethought
Of Nature's brain flung out in wantonness
To ease the bubbling ichors of her blood.

But if you know the Simpler's kindly skill,
Weeds are the " leaves for healing " given to man
In a lost Eden. Once out in the West
I knew an Indian medicine-man,
Who taught me how to heal with prairie weeds;

" Old Salt " had been a pirate in his youth
And sailed a clipper on the Carib seas;
Grown old, his godless crew had marooned him
Upon the Cocos Isles; he was picked up
By a tramp trader and brought into port.
Then he forsook the sea and kept an inn
That held a record of unsavory brawls.
There the old fearfulness that cowed his men
Upon the sea, still compassed him around;
The ghostly tapping of his old peg leg,
The empty eye-socket that glared at us,
The crimson rag that bound his unkempt hair

I laugh when town-folk call the color " red "
We painted barns and schoolhouses years back;
It isn't red at all, but old " York Brown. "
You'll find it cropping out here in the hills.
Some ore is pure; a man can take good oil
And grind the rotted stone up fine and have
A better paint than he can buy " below. "
I always thought the Lord made that brown paint
To match the rusty Sumach bobs that grew
Around all the schoolhouses in those days,
Shading the woodsheds, reaching, peering in

" No, I'm not crazy, Doctor, I'm all right ...
" Whose business is it if I lock the door
To the spare room? You couldn't stand that noise
And work. If I stir round out here,
Jingle the tins and clatter dishwashing,
I can go all day without hearing it.

" I get along all right through the day time ...
Perhaps you could do something for me nights.
Yes, what you heard I told Mis' Peck is true:
She walks out of her picture frame at night;
I hear her stepping light around the house
And laughing in the dark.

There's the old Wesleyan church between the roads;
It stands in a little corner of land
That Long-Bob Somerville gave to the church
Before the War. It won't be standing long;
The horse-shed rotted in the sills and fell
Only last year; and now it isn't safe
To go up the old stairway to the bell
Hung on timbers in the high, square steeple;
And the window-panes are falling out fast.
We hold a Union Service there Sundays,
But no one takes an interest in the church.
I can look ahead and see it flat

Look down the road — he is crossing the bridge;
He'll pass the cranberry bush in a minute.
(I must pick those cranberries tomorrow
And make some sauce for the harvesters).
Now you can see the long stocking dangling
And the steel needles he's using.
He walks over the roads year in and year out
Knitting — knitting. His hair has grown long
And hangs over his thin shoulders like strings.
The rains and the snows beat down upon him
Winter and Summer; he won't wear a hat
Because, he tells you, he can't see the sky.

When I go to see her, I look about the room
Where she sits placidly knitting — knitting.
It has the curious musty odor
Of our grandmother's parlors. The old things
One remembers are all there around her:
The hair-cloth furniture; the kaleidoscope
On the " What-not, " the wax flowers under glass,
The cardboard motto on the walls, saying
" God Bless Our Home " with flourishes
And sprays of rosebuds in fine shaded wools;
The antimacassars on the rocking chairs,
The album on the marble-topped table,

She stood at the ironing board pressing a shirt
Of white calico. " This shirt is for George, "
She said. " He is going to town Sunday
To Nance Wilson's party; he couldn't go
Until I made this shirt; he never had
A white one before, we have been so poor. "

I spoke sharply: " Nance Wilson is a vain woman —
Not bad that I know of, but silly.
Do you let your husband go there alone,
And iron his shirts to make him look decent
In her eyes? "

" I dunno, " she said, pausing

She was a woman who played the fiddle
And never professed to have religion, —
At least not orthodox. Now, her husband
Was a deacon, and 'twas unbecoming
For a deacon's wife not to be pious,
And often he was ashamed in meeting
To see her sitting in a back seat
Stony-like, while he prayed and exhorted.
And sinners coming to the Mercy Seat
Thought it strange she never shook hands with them
And urged them to " go forward, " or said " Amen "
To the deacon's exhorting.

She was kind