side;
    And, thinking so, I wept a second flood
    More poignant than the first;
    But afterwards was greatly comforted. 
    It seem’d, the guilt of blood was passing from me
    Even in the act and agony of tears,
    And all my sins forgiven.

* * * * *

THE WITCH

      A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1798)

* * * * *

      CHARACTERS

Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Pairford.  Stranger.

* * * * *

    SERVANT
    One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced,
    Was pacing to and fro in the avenue
    That westward fronts our house,
    Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted
    Three hundred years ago
    By a neighb’ring prior of the Fairford name. 
    Being o’er-task’d in thought, he heeded not
    The importunate suit of one who stood by the gate,
    And begged an alms. 
    Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate
    With angry chiding; but I can never think
    (Our master’s nature hath a sweetness in it)
    That he could use a woman, an old woman,
    With such discourtesy:  but he refused her—­
    And better had he met a lion in his path
    Than that old woman that night;
    For she was one who practised the black arts,
    And served the devil, being since burnt for witchcraft. 
    She looked at him as one that meant to blast him,
    And with a frightful noise,
    (’Twas partly like a woman’s voice,
    And partly like the hissing of a snake,)
    She nothing said but this:—­
    (Sir Francis told the words)

        A mischief, mischief, mischief,
        And a nine-times-killing curse,
      By day and by night, to the caitiff wight,
      Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door,
        And shuts up the womb of his purse.

    And still she cried

          A mischief,
        And a nine-fold-withering curse: 
      For that shall come to thee that will undo thee,
        Both all that thou fearest and worse.

    So saying, she departed,
    Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath
    Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling;
    So he described it.

    STRANGER
    A terrible curse!  What followed?

    SERVANT
    Nothing immediate, but some two months after
    Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick,
    And none could tell what ailed him; for he lay,
    And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off,
    And he, that was full-fleshed, became as thin
    As a two-months’ babe that has been starved in the nursing. 
    And sure I think
    He bore his death-wound like a little child;
    With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy