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;
He told me that there grew upon the earth
A weed to heal each pain of mortal flesh.

There's Plantain, with its shining, ribbed green leaf
And strong, white rootlets clutching the firm sod —
A common weed, in truth; to me, a boon.
Break plantain leaves and bind them on the skin
And it shall grow as smooth as any child's.

Solomon's Seal twines in the virgin loam
Upon the little hillocks in new land;
And in the hollows Feverwort and Spurge

And Asthma-weed, and that tall purple flower,
Queen of the Meadow, and the white Boneset
That Indians always call the " Sweating Plant. "

They all are Simples . If I love one best,
It is the Yarrow. Once long, long ago,
Before the battered walls of windy Troy,
Achilles plucked the Yarrow for his men
And stanched their wounds with its narcotic ooze.

The Lady Slipper, with her rose-veined hood,
Springs from a root that pours forgetfulness.
And there are many plants that bring deep sleep
And stranger madness — if we use them ill.
Their roots are gravid with dark potencies
Mystery on mystery of dripping sap
That can hold back the breath through the pale hours
When Death tugs hard to break the slender cord.
But if one break a leaf or root o'er much,
Death is their gift: there is great magic there.

And every herb and weed bears its own sign:
A Simpler reads them like an open page.
Dig up each root, pull out the stalks; somewhere
The sign is hiding — planispheres writ small.
If you should doubt, — why, pull the Bloodroot's stalk,
Or dig a Mandrake — if your heart quake not.
There are sweet odors that have healing power.
The crushed leaves of the plumy wild Horsemint
Shaken in close rooms at the dead of night
Will fight against a fever's burning breath,
And conjure dreams that ease the clouded mind.

Healall will cleanse the humors of the blood
And make it mild as the soft springtime rain;
And the Field Primrose in her yellow silk
Gives balm that age to youth can quick renew;
And Bruisewort plucked in autumn draws the pain
From out old wounds.

But I have never found
The Magic Herb that grows somewhere on earth.
It is not Vervain with its lancet leaves
And purple salvers lifted up to heaven;
Nor Blue Vervain that's called " the Simpler's joy " ;
Nor Holy Thistle of St. Benedict,
Nor Lion's Foot that cures the serpent's sting.
I shall go seeking till my days are done
The Simple that shall ease the troubled soul
And mend the broken armor of the brain.
The Master Herb that, bruised, shall cure death, —
I know it grows — perhaps just close at hand —
One of the common weeds of barren soil.