(to f. s.)

after full many a mutual delay

my friend and i at last fixed on a day

for seeing black cross farm, which he had long

boasted the fittest theme for tale or song

in all that charming region round about:

something that must not really be left out

of the account of things to do for me.

it was a teasing bit of mystery,

he said, which he and his had tried in vain,

ever since they had found it, to explain.

the right way was to happen, as they did,

upon it in the hills where it was hid;

but chance could not be always trusted, quite,

you might not happen on it, though you might;

encores were usually objected to

by chance. the next best thing that we could do

was in his carryall, to start together,

and trust that somehow favoring wind and weather,

[pg 174]with the eccentric progress of his horse,

would so far drift us from our settled course

that we at least could lose ourselves, if not

find the mysterious object that we sought.

so one blithe morning of the ripe july

we fared, by easy stages, toward the sky

that rested one rim of its turquoise cup

low on the distant sea, and, tilted up,

the other on the irregular hilltops. sweet

the sun and wind that joined to cool and heat

the air to one delicious temperature;

and over the smooth-cropt mowing-pieces pure

the pine-breath, borrowing their spicy scent

in barter for the balsam that it lent!

and when my friend handed the reins to me,

and drew a fuming match along his knee,

and, lighting his cigar, began to talk,

i let the old horse lapse into a walk

from his perfunctory trot, content to listen,

amid that leafy rustle and that glisten

of field, and wood, and ocean, rapt afar,

from every trouble of our anxious star.

from time to time, between effect and cause

in this or that, making a questioning pause,

my friend peered round him while he feigned a gay

hope that we might have taken the wrong way

at the last turn, and then let me push on,

or the old horse rather, slanting hither and yon,

[pg 175]and never in the middle of the track,

except when slanting off or slanting back.

he talked, i listened, while we wandered by

the scanty fields of wheat and oats and rye,

with patches of potatoes and of corn,

and now and then a garden spot forlorn,

run wild where once a house had stood, or where

an empty house yet stood, and seemed to stare

upon us blindly from the twisted glass

of windows that once let no wayfarer pass

unseen of children dancing at the pane,

and vanishing to reappear again,

pulling their mother with them to the sight.

still we kept on, with turnings left and right,

past farmsteads grouped in cheerful neighborhoods,

or solitary; then through shadowy woods

of pine or birch, until the road, grass-grown,

had given back to nature all her own

save a faint wheel-trace, that along the slope,

rain-gullied, seemed to stop and doubt and grope,

and then quite ceased, as if 't had turned and fled

out of the forest into which it led,

and left us at the gate whose every bar

was nailed against us. but, "oh, here we are!"

my friend cried joyously. "at last, at last!"

and making our horse superfluously fast,

[pg 176]he led the way onward by what had been

a lane, now hid by weeds and briers between

meadows scarce worth the mowing, to a space

shaped as by nature for the dwelling-place

of kindly human life: a small plateau

open to the heaven that seemed bending low

in liking for it. there beneath a roof

still against winter and summer weather-proof,

with walls and doors and windows perfect yet,

between its garden and its graveyard set,

stood the old homestead, out of which had perished

the home whose memory it dumbly cherished,

and which, when at our push the door swung wide,

we might have well imagined to have died

and had its funeral the day before:

so clean and cold it was from floor to floor,

so lifelike and so deathlike, with the thrill

of hours when life and death encountered still

passionate in it. they that lay below

the tangled grasses or the drifted snow,

husband and wife, mother and little one,

from that sad house less utterly were gone

than they that living had abandoned it.

in moonless nights their absences might flit,

homesick, from room to room, or dimly sit

around its fireless hearths, or haunt the rose

and lily in the neglected garden close;

[pg 177]but they whose feet had borne them from the door

would pass the footworn threshold nevermore.

we read the moss-grown names upon the tombs,

with lighter melancholy than the glooms

of the dead house shadowed us with, and thence

turning, my heart was pierced with more intense

suggestion of a mystical dismay,

as in the brilliance of the summer day

we faced the vast gray barn. the house was old,

though so well kept, as age by years is told

in our young land; but the barn, gray and vast,

stood new and straight and strong—all battened fast

at every opening; and where once the mow

had yawned wide-windowed, on the sheathing now

a cross was nailed, the bigness of a man,

aslant from left to right, athwart the span,

and painted black as paint could make it. hushed,

i stood, while manifold conjecture rushed

to this point and to that point, and then burst

in the impotent questionings rejected first.

what did it mean? ah, that no one could tell.

who put it there? that was unknown as well.

was there no legend? my friend knew of none.

no neighborhood story? he had sought for one

[pg 178]in vain. did he imagine it accident,

with nothing really implied or meant

by the boards set in that way? it might be,

but i could answer that as well as he.

then (desperately) what did he guess it was:

something of purpose, or without a cause

other than chance? he slowly shook his head,

and with his gaze fixed on the symbol said:

"we have quite ceased from guessing or surmising,

for all our several and joint devising

has left us finally where i must leave you.

but now i think it is your part to do

yourself some guessing. i hoped you might bring

a fresh mind to the riddle's unraveling.

come!"

and thus challenged i could not deny

the sort of right he had to have me try;

and yielding, i began—instinctively

proceeding by exclusion: "we agree

it was not put there as a pious charm

to keep the abandoned property from harm?

the owner could have been no catholic;

and yet it was no sacrilegious trick

to make folks wonder; and it was not chance

assuredly that set those boards askance

in that shape, or before or after, so

painted them to that coloring of woe.

[pg 179]do you suppose, then, that it could have been

some secret sorrow or some secret sin,

that tried to utter or to expiate

itself in that way: some unhappy hate

turned to remorse, or some life-rending grief

that could not find in years or tears relief?

who lived here last?"

"ah," my friend made reply,

"you know as much concerning that as i.

all i could tell is what those gravestones tell,

and they have told it all to you as well.

the names, the dates, the curious epitaphs

at whose quaint phrase one either sighs or laughs,

just as one's heart or head happens to be

hollow or not, are there for each to see.

but i believe they have nothing to reveal:

no wrong to publish, no shame to conceal."

"and yet that cross!" i turned at his reply,

fixing the silent symbol with my eye,

insistently. "and you consent," i said,

"to leave the enigma uninterpreted?"

"why, no," he faltered, then went on: "suppose

that some one that had known the average woes

of human nature, finding that the load

was overheavy for him on life's road,

had wished to leave some token in this cross,

of what had been his gain and been his loss,

[pg 180]of what had been his suffering and of what

had also been the solace of his lot?

whoever that unknown brother-man might be,

i think he must have been like you and me,

who bear our cross, and when we fail at length,

bow down and pray to it for greater strength."

i mused, and as i mused, i seemed to find

the fancy more and still more to my mind.

"well, let it go at that! i think, for me,

i like that better than some tragedy

of clearer physiognomy, which were

in being more definite the vulgarer.

for us, what, after all, would be the gain

of making the elusive meaning plain?

i really think, if i were you and yours,

i would not lift the veil that now obscures

the appealing fact, lest i should spoil the charm

deeding me for my own the black cross farm."

"a good suggestion! i am glad," said he,

"we have always practised your philosophy."

he smiled, we laughed; we sighed and turned away,

and left the mystery to the summer day

that made as if it understood, and could

have read the riddle to us if it would:

the wide, wise sky, the clouds that on the grass

let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass;

[pg 181]the conscious woods, the stony meadows growing

up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing

of one disconsolate cow. all the warm afternoon,

lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune

of insects, and the chirp of songless birds,

forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words,

drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane

that to our coming feet had been so plain,

and lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth,

and thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath,

amidst the wilding loveliness to stray,

and spend, if need were, looking for the way,

whole hours; but blundered into the right course

suddenly, and came out upon our horse,

where we had left him—to our great surprise,

stamping and switching at the pestering flies,

but not apparently anxious to depart,

when nearly overturning at the start,

we followed down that evanescent trace

which, followed up, had brought us to the place.

then, all the wayside scenes reversing, we

dropped to the glimpses of the distant sea,

content as if we brought, returning thus,

the secret of the black cross back with us.