Village Mystery

The woman in the pointed hood And cloak blue-gray like a pigeon's wing, Whose orchard climbs to the balsam-wood, Has done a cruel thing.

To her back door-step came a ghost, A girl who had been ten years dead, She stood by the granite hitching-post And begged for a piece of bread.

Now why should I, who walk alone, Who am ironical and proud, Turn, when a woman casts a stone At a beggar in a shroud?

I saw the dead girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air-- But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And so I did not care!