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 eyes, 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. III. 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. She answered not with railing words, But drew her apron o'er her face, And, sobbing, glided from the place. And only pausing at the door, Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze Of one who, in her better days, Had been her warm and steady friend, Ere yet her mother's doom had made Even Esek Harden half afraid. He felt that mute appeal of tears, And, starting, with an angry frown, Hushed all the wicked murmurs down. "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said, "This passes harmless mirth or jest; I brook no insult to my guest. "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!" IV. IN THE SHADOW.