The Witch-Maid, and Other Verses/The Witch-Maid
THE WITCH-MAID
I wandered in the woodland a morning in the spring,
I found a glade I had not known, and saw an evil thing.
I heard a wood-dove calling, as one that loves and grieves,
The sun was shining silver on the small bright leaves,
O it was very beautiful, the glade that I had found!
I peeped between the slender stems, and there upon the ground
A man was lying dead, and from the spear-wound in his side
The sluggish blood had ceased to flow, and yet had hardly dried.
O the shining of the leaves,
The morning of the year!
O how could any die to-day, with life so young and dear?
My feet were tied with horror, I could not turn to run;
A light breeze tossed the branches, the shadow and the sun
Across the dead face shifted—it seemed to change and twitch—
When from the trees beyond me stepped a white young witch.
I prayed that I was hidden, she never turned her head,
But picked her footsteps daintily and stooped beside the dead;
She touched him with her hanging hair and stroked him with her hand,
Still gazing like a little child that does not understand,
For she had strayed from Elfland where death has never come,
She knew not why his side was torn nor why his mouth was dumb.
She sat her down beside him and joined her finger-tips
And smiled a strange and secret smile that curved her thin red lips;
She wore a veil of purple about her body sweet
And little silver sandals on her smooth pale feet;
Her black hair hung as straight as rain and touched the dead man's eyes,
He smiled at her in answer, a scornful smile and wise.
She played with him awhile as might a panther-kitten play,
Most horrible it was, and yet I could not look away—
I needs must watch her motions, her cruel, supple grace,
The delicate swift changes of her sharp-cut face;
Till suddenly she wearied, and rising from her knees
All in one lovely movement like a sapling in the breeze,
She gazed on him who would not play, with gathering surprise—
The man she did not understand, though she was very wise—
She drew her veil around her, her whiteness showing through,
And gazed; and still unceasingly there came the wood-dove's coo.
O the stirring of the spring,
The calling of the dove!
Why does he lie so cold, so cold, when I am here to love?
Her long strange eyes were narrowed to threads of shining green,
She touched the broken spear-point the wound's red lips between,
She touched it with her careless foot, and yet he did not stir,
Dull fool that lay with open eyes and would not look at her!
She turned away in anger and raised her arms on high,
Her straight white arms that questioned the pure pale sky,
The thousand slender tree-stems soon hid the way she went
As they who hold a secret and therewith are content.
The dead man smiled in silence; a strange thought in me said,
If I had heard her speak at all then I too should be dead:
Her voice—what would her voice be?—and then I fled, afraid,
The spell was loosed that bound me to the evil glade.
O the flowers in the grass,
The wood-dove in the tree;
From magic and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver me!