Gammer Dune

In a miserable cot, on a lone and dreary spot
     Where the henbane and cieuta made a sickening air at noon, 
Lived a shriveled dame alone, - she a weird, uncanny crone,
     Shunned by most, and by the timed named in whispers "Gammer Dune."

Bent and bony was her back, and her hair, that once was black, 
     Thin and grizzled, and rebellious, straggled o'er her withered face;
Stiff and gray a scattered beard on her sharpened chin appeared, 
     And her shrunken lips were bristled with the same delusive grace!

Like a parrot's beak her nose o’er the chin hung, and like foes 
     Seeking reconciliation, slowly they approached to greet, 
For her mouth was sunken in, and her voice was cracked thin, 
     And her toothless gums kept munching some consumeless devil's-meat.

Where the right eye once had shone was a shriveled pit, alone;
     But the left shot keen and furtive glances, with no glass to aid 
Or would bend a long, fixed look on an old, black-lettered Book, 
     Leather-bound, with dog's-eared pages, grimmed with smoke and finger-frayed.

Slyly blinking on the mat was a black, infernal cat, 
     And its evil eye was single, and its whiskers stiff and gray:
Ha! 'twas Gammer Dune herself, in her double, the black elf!
     I have heard her miaule at midnight! would the frighted talker say.

I have seen her meekly crawl on the Elder's garden-wall, 
     And there vanish into nothing when the good man cried,
As a brindled cow sh's torn many a field of ripening corn, 
     And, scourged out, has stolen to bed, bruised and lame in every joint!

While her gaffer lived,- poor wretch, driven to liquor by that witch! —
     I myself have seen the ridges on her own discolored back, 
Where the cudgel of Budd Jones skinned the thieving brindle's bones, —
     And the imp accused her goodman of each disanointing thwack.

Many an hour I'd churn and churn, when the cream would never turn
     Till I dropped a red-hot needle in the thin and frothy mess;
Why old Gammer Dune, next day, for her blistered arm would say,
     The hot teapot lid had struck it,—you, as well as I, may guess!

In the corner of her room stood her horse, -a birchen broom 
     And 'twas scorched midway the handle, and the top had shrinkage seams;
Maybe Satan never rode it, when the withered witch bestrode it;
     But I've seen things! I have seen things in dark nights by lightening-gleams!

Well, at last the old witch died; but her spirit tried and tried 
     To escape while we, her watchers, stood around her dying bed!
But a moment came, one day,-for an instant called away, 
     We returned, and in that instant she was stricken stark and dead!

And the black cat, evil-eyed, on that very day she died,
     Strangely wawling o'er the stiffened corse till she was thrust away;
"Loved her mistress?" Humph, this wise, Satan loves the soul he buys!
     O, we trembled when we left her waiting for the Judgment Day!

"And that old, black-lettered Book whence her wicked craft she took?"
     Well, I own that there I'm puzzled, puzzled what to think 
From a chest the Parson drew it, —he alone dared look into it:
     'Twas her old dead mother’s Bible, read and pondered every day!