THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.

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"She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers.

"Let Goody Martin rest in peace; I never knew her harm a fly,

And witch or not, God knows-not I.

"I know who swore her life away; And, as God lives, I'd not condemn An Indian dog on word of them.'

The broadest lands in all the town,

The skill to guide, the power to awe,
Were Harden's; and his word was law.

None dared withstand him to his face,
But one sly maiden spake aside:
"The little witch is evil-eyed!

"Her mother only killed a cow,

Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;
But she, forsooth, must charm a man!”

Poor Mabel, in her lonely home,

Sat by the window's narrow pane,
White in the moonlight's silver rain.

The river, on its pebbled rim,

Made music such as childhood knew;
The door-yard tree was whispered through

By voices such as childhood's ear
Had heard in moonlights long ago;
And through the willow-boughs below

She saw the rippled waters shine;
Beyond, in waves of shade and light,
The hills rolled off into the night.

Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so
The sadness of her human lot,
She saw and heard, but heeded not.

She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach her bitter heart to pray.

Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry

Of utter misery: "Let me die!

"Oh! take me from the scornful eyes, And hide me where the cruel speech And mocking finger may not reach!

"I dare not breathe my mother's name: A daughter's right I dare not crave To weep above her unblest grave !

"Let me not live until my heart, With few to pity, and with none To love me, hardens into stone.

"O God! have mercy on thy child,

Whose faith in thee grows weak and small, And take me ere I lose it all!"

A shadow on the moonlight fell,

And murmuring wind and wave became
A voice whose burden was her name.

Had then God heard her? Had he sent
His angel down? In flesh and blood,
Before her Esek Harden stood !

He laid his hand upon her arm :
"Dear Mabel, this no more shall be ;
Who scoffs at you, must scoff at me.

THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.

"You know rough Esek Harden well; And if he seems no suitor gay,

And if his hair is touched with gray,

"The maiden grown shall never find

His heart less warm than when she smiled,
Upon his knees, a little child!”

Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
As, folded in his strong embrace,
She looked in Esek Harden's face.

"Oh, truest friend of all!" she said,
"God bless you for your kindly thought,
And make me worthy of my lot!"

He led her through his dewy fields,
To where the swinging lanterns glowed,
And through the doors the huskers showed.

"Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,
"I'm weary of this lonely life;

In Mabel see my chosen wife!

"She greets you kindly, one and all; The past is past, and all offence Falls harmless from her innocence.

"Henceforth she stands no more alone; You know what Esek Harden is ;He brooks no wrong to him or his."

Now let the merriest tales be told,

And let the sweetest songs be sung
That ever made the old heart young!

For now the lost has found a home
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
As all the household joys return!

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Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
Between the shadow of the mows,
Looked on them through the great elm-boughs

On Mabel's curls of golden hair,

On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;

And the wind whispered, "It is well! "

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span

Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann.

Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down,

And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing-town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its mem ory waxes old,

When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled.

Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool,

And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul !

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend

A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,

In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things,

Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid

sings.

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

309

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life

of old,

Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold;

Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay,

Golden threads of romance weaving in a web of hodden gray.

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din

Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in ;

And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme,

Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time.

So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew,

When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through,

From the graves of old traditions I part the blackberry-vines,

Wipe the moss from off the head-stones, and retouch the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran,

The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann;

On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.

On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth