Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE 'STILL-HOUSE SPRING, by ELIZABETH PICKETT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE 'STILL-HOUSE SPRING, by                    
First Line: Dripping over fern and docks
Last Line: Forever the 'still-house spring!
Subject(s): Death; Flowers; Dead, The


DRIPPING over fern and docks,
Leaping down from pool to rocks,
Through the briar rose and the phlox,
Go thy waters singing;
From a basin jeweled fine,
With the jaunty columbine,
Where the pink arbutus twine
Comes thy strong voice ringing:

Milkweed drips dew in my basin
All tangled in dogwood and ash,
Locust trees tower above me,
Their branches with copper a-flash:
My fingers reach down to the Devil,
My hair to the bitter sea;
Yet ye say ye have pipes and concrete
And mills—for the likes o' me!

Seal me in walls of mortar,
Pipe me in leaden chains?
Send me in bondage flowing
Through fields and houses and drains?
Death to ye, Men o' To-morrow,
I am no servile thing!
My fingers lock with the Devil's,
For I am the 'Still-House Spring!

I was the comrade of stallions,
Bronzed and glist'ning with sweat;
I was the friend of the Indian,
Where chieftain and tribe have met;
Many the tales that my waters
Whisper and chant to the earth,
To the cool, moist ribs of the rockbed,
When the Devil gave me birth.

He sent me up from his kingdom
Deep-throated and blue as the sky,
My basin all pebbled with gold-dust,
The locusts above me arched high;
Moonshiners have dipped up my waters
And made them into a wine—
A liquor as hot and as choking
As the Devil, my master, could find.

They hewed down my ash and my oak trees,
Built up a distillery there,
Bartered and sold and haggled,
And died for it, foul means or fair!
'Til once on a night in autumn,
When the lonely moon wandered high,
Came the chief's young daughter riding
To warn them with her cry.

"The government men are coming!
Fight! It's too late to hide!"
And fainting, she fell by my basin
With a musket-wound in her side.
They barred up the door and the window,
Choked out the fire and the light,
Waited with rifles held steady
And cocked, for the coming fight.

The government men came rushing
Like the winds that whistle in March,
They circled the silent cabin
With fagots of spruce and larch;
They fought like the cats of the mountains
Whose shrill cries haunt the night,
'Til the tangle had burst out blazing
And the cabin was flooded with light.

The flames leaped out in long fingers
That clawed the distillery wall;
They laughed and cracked and sparkled
As the timbers began to fall;
And under the death and the screaming,
In his own hot kingdom below,
The Devil was squeezing my fingers
In joy, that men perish so!

The fitful flames fell lower;
The government men rode away,
And over the ragged tree-tops
Came the dawn of the white new day.
The girl rose up from her fainting,
Pushed back her tawny-gold hair,
Slipped blindly into my basin
And died in the darkness there.

I can feel my fingers flowing
O'er her throat and lips and eyes;
I can feel her heavy tresses
On my clear, bright bosom rise.
Winds whimper aloft in the locusts,
The lonely moon wanders high
As the gaunt, charred walls of the 'Still-House
Rise, wraith-like against the sky.

Death to ye, Men o' To-morrow,
I laugh at your leaden chains!
I laugh at your mills and concrete,
Your fields and houses and drains!
Death to ye, Men o' To-morrow,
I am no servile thing!
I shall wallow in dogwood and locust
Forever the 'Still-House Spring!





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