Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known, The charms and riddles that beguiled On Oxus' banks the young world's child,-- That primal picture-speech wherein Have youth and maid the story told, So new in each, so dateless old, Recalling pastoral Ruth in her Who waited, blushing and demure, The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture. But still the sweetest voice was mute That river-valley ever heard From lips of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow's shadow fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife's child a friend. The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother at the gallows-tree; And mocked the prison-palsied limbs That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling with its prayers! Few questioned of the sorrowing child, Or, when they saw the mother die; Dreamed of the daughter's agony. They went up to their homes that day, As men and Christians justified God willed it, and the wretch had died! Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies,-- Forgive the blindness that denies! Forgive thy creature when he takes, For the all-perfect love Thou art, Some grim creation of his heart. Cast down our idols, overturn Our bloody altars; let us see Thyself in Thy humanity! Young Mabel from her mother's grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! Oh, dreary broke the winter days, And dreary fell the winter nights When, one by one, the neighboring lights Went out, and human sounds grew still, And all the phantom-peopled dark Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark. And summer days were sad and long, And sad the uncompanioned eves, And sadder sunset-tinted leaves, And Indian Summer's airs of balm; She scarcely felt the soft caress, The beauty died of loneliness! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother's curse pursued her there. And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw the horseshoe's curved charm, To guard against her mother's harm! That mother, poor and sick and lame, Who daily, by the old arm-chair, Folded her withered hands in prayer;-- Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er, When her dim eyes could read no more! Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept Her faith, and trusted that her way, So dark, would somewhere meet the day. And still her weary wheel went round Day after day, with no relief Small leisure have the poor for grief. IV. THE CHAMPION. So in the shadow Mabel sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, Her smile is sadder than her tears. But cruel eyes have found her out, And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt her with her mother's shame.