Why I am a witching crone? Why I live here in the woods alone? I lived with my son in a little place— A hut, and some needs, and some small space. He was a quiet lad, but a life mistake I find: I didn't know what went on in his mind. He came to me and said, one day: "I want to get married—could you not go away To my sister's—your daughter's house? The woman that I wish to spouse Wants everything here just a certain way." He told me her name, and I must say I thought she need not act so proud— Her mother had a lover, with her husband just in shroud! That a strange woman should mean such to him— While I, who had made him alive to love, had kept his life in trim— I went over to my one daughter's house, When I saw what I said did not arouse Her heart, when I heard what she said I cried, why I had lived with, and born him, now dead, These thankless children as the price of that living—! She said: "I have four children, and just thirty is my age. I'll have four more before I can have my old age. Isn't that enough work, and a husband yet? Now tell that to my brother, don't forget. He's got more money than we have here, I've got to make a heritage, too, for some far year!" I went out, but not back to the house of my son. He wouldn't think I was hurt or dead; he would think of @3that one.@1 I ate fruit in the forest, after my clothes got ragged, I saw lightning next to me rive a tree jagged, And in the shooting rain something said from the tree— "Will you learn witchery? Will you learn ..... witchery?" I can get food and clothing then; I am low, since my children are of me. "Will you learn witchery?" "I will,"—yet afraid—"Where is your secret?" "There is a scroll by you and it will let Into your mind the mystery!" I got my food and clothing by winking them, then, From the villagers, boards and weaving kens. The good be-thieved sent out their constable. I turned to nothing in the very chains and I turned the table! And I can make a potion from the minute making midnight, And I can make a curse from the heat of two-stag fights. I can cripple you with the poison of a rose. I can turn your coin into rotted glows. But you say you understand me, you are better than the worst, You may go off without an incant or curse. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CAVALIER TUNES: MARCHING ALONG by ROBERT BROWNING LOVE'S APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT; AN ALLEGORICAL ROMANCE by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE O SLEEP, MY BABE! by SARA COLERIDGE AN ENGLISH MOTHER by ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON THE FIFTEEN ACRES by JAMES STEPHENS THE FLITCH OF BACON: MY OLD COMPLAINT (ITS CAUSE AND CURE) by WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH |