 | Poems by John Howard Bryant |  |
65
ROGER CRANE.
I had been wandering in the wood,A child of eight years old, or so,
With careless step and dreamy mood,
Where fancy prompted me to go.
'Twas then I met old Roger Crane,
One whom I ne'er had seen before,
But oft had heard aunt Betty tell
His dark, mysterious story o'er.
I found him in an open glade,
Sitting upon a smooth gray stone;
Beside him rose a blasted tree;
His broad hand rested on his knee:
Musing he seemed, and all alone.
Wild was the scene and lonely round,
And moss-clad rocks were scattered nigh,
Deep shadowy woods enclosed the spot,
And running waters murmured by.
The sun was set, the twilight came;
One star was twinkling overhead,
And from the western sky the fringe
Of crimson light was almost fled.
His shaggy brow was sternly knit:
It seemed to me, as I drew nigh,
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The chamber of that awful eye.
I met his glance; and oh! my heart;
Its very blood grew thick and chill;
I had no power to stir a pace,
For I was rooted to the place,
A statue, motionless and still.
I broke the spell with one long bound;
Methought I heard his footstep follow;
But when I reached the opposing hill
I looked, and saw old Roger still
Lone sitting in the dusky hollow.
Years passed away, but still my feet
Dared not approach that spot again;
And oft, in dreams, I started at
The image of old Roger Crane.
But bolder lads, who ventured near,
Told that they saw him sitting there;
And that, at distance, you might hear
His voice upon the midnight air.
In winter Roger was not seen;
But when the light of spring was come,
Ere yet the warmest vales were green,
He issued from his secret home,
And threw the fallen boughs aside,
And scraped away the darkened snow
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And cast it in the brook below,
So that the earliest warmth might lie
Upon the sere declivity.
At length a sweeping tempest came;
The rushing rain in torrents poured,
And through the hollows of the wood,
The fearful whirlwind swept and roared.
Dark was the night, and doleful sounds
Were heard upon the murky sky,
And fitful was the lightning's flash,
And trees fell down with dreaful crash,
As that tremendous storm went by.
The uproar ceased, and men passed o'er
The spot where Roger sat so long.
The blasted tree uprooted lay;
The stream had washed the knoll away;
And still poured furiously and strong.
But nought of Roger Crane was there,
Save that his tattered hat was found
Far down the channel of the brook,
Half buried in the pebbly ground,
And still he never has been seen,
Though since that storm twelve years have flown;
But some who wandered near the spot,
At evening, when the winds are not,
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And some aver that they descried
His dim ghost gliding by the wood,
Far in the twilight's doubtful gleam,
Or in the mist, above the stream
Where once the withered tree had stood.
They said they knew his long white hair,
His scowling eye and savage air;
But why he sat upon that stone,
And what, beneath that blasted tree,
He muttered to himself alone,
Is all a mystery to me.
Some said he'd done a wicked deed,
For which his conscience ever smarted;
And some, that he was mad with grief;
And some, that he was broken-hearted;
And that beneath the stone so gray,
On which he sat so many a day,
His loved one's dust was laid away;
That when the fearful storm was gone,
And men for Roger came to look,
Some scattered human bones were found
Along the channel of the brook.
Some guessed that in the winter time,
When all our hearth-fires brightly burned,
He dwelt in some deep mountain cave,
And came again when spring returned.
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I know not, and I never knew;
But this I know, that for the term
Of thirty summers, on that stone,
Through all the changes of the sky,
Through cold and heat, and wet and dry,
Old Roger sat and mused alone;
And when the mighty tempest came,
And floods poured down the narrow glen,
He left his long-frequented haunt,
And vanished from the sight of men.
| Poems by John Howard Bryant | |