III
The new years pass like a quick-turned page,
And Habberton’s daughter links hands with Age.
Dusk and dawn, and new tasks are hers,
And the hot thoughts fade and remembrance blurs,
And her hate is starving and scarcely stirs.
For after the dust of twenty years
Her eyes have begun to remember tears.
The air was heavy with rain and Spring,
Still strong was William Habberton,
The black steeds made the coulters ring,
Plowing beneath a watery sun.
And at sunset Habberton stands alone,
And strains at the weight of a buried stone.
“Corn shall sprout from the stubborn clay,
For the rest has moldered with years away.”
The stones are rolled to the edge of the fen.
He turns to the stilts of the plow again.
His daughter nears where the earth lies red,
And swiftly the furrow drives ahead.
Till the sharp blade crashes through crunching bone.
And a white thing rolls where the clods are thrown.
And crackling under the leader’s shoe
Is a tarnished button, a scrap of blue.
Like icy wind his daughter spoke,
“Your plow is chained to a deadly yoke!”
Her fingers clawed within his coat.
His own knife gripped him at the throat.
“Rusty and dull, drive true, drive true!
You shall drink long for the work you do!”
She flung him at the horses’ feet.
“Lie there who dared to touch my sweet!”
The whip slashed down as she whispered low,
“And now the plow, and now the plow!”
And over him, struggling, mad and seared,
The horrible mace of the plow upreared.
... Dumb she drove to the western gate.
“Fate and the furrow have cloven straight.”
“Long to wait for the sheriff’s men.
I will go back to my youth again.”
Up to the curb she reeled and sank.
And the red knife nuzzled and tore and drank.
... A sallow moon swam over the rise ...
And the horses stamped and rolled their eyes
At the coming and going of the flies.
Habberton’s plow.
John made it
William stayed it.
Sharp the blade it bears till now!