There be apart a place
Wherein I treasure my God’s gifts.
Think ye to peer therein? Nay.
And should thee by a chance
To catch a stolen glimpse,
Thee’dst laugh amerry, for hord (hoard)
Would show but dross to thee:
A friend’s regard, ashrunked and turned
To naught—but one bright memory is there;
A hope—now dead, but showeth gold hid there;
A host o’ nothings—dreams, hopes, fears;
Love throbs afluttered hence
Since first touch o’ baby hands
Caressed my heart’s store ahidden.
Returning to the femininity of Patience, it is also shown in her
frequent references to dress. Upon an evening when the publication of
her poems had been under discussion, when next the board was taken up
she let them know that she had heard, in this manner:
“My pettieskirt hath a scallop,” she said. “Mayhap that will help thy
history.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Curran, “we are discovered!”
“Yea,” laughed Patience—she must have laughed, “and tell thou of my
buckled boots and add a cap-string.”
Further illustrative of her feminine characteristics and of her interest
in dress, as well as of a certain fun-loving spirit which now and then
seems to sway her, is this record of a sitting upon an evening when Mr.
Curran and Mr. Hutchings had gone to the theater, and the ladies were
alone:
_Patience._—“Go ye to the lighted hall to search for learning? Nay, ’tis
a piddle, not a stream, ye search. Mayhap thou sendest thy men for
barleycorn. ’Twould then surprise thee should the asses eat it.”
_Mrs. H._—“What is she driving at?”
_Mrs. P._—“The men and the theater, I suppose.”
_Mrs. H._—“Patience, what are they seeing up there?”
_Patience._—“Ne’er a timid wench, I vum.”
_Mrs. C._—“You don’t approve of their going, do you, Patience?”
_Patience._—“Thee’lt find a hearth more profit. Better they cast the bit
of paper.”
_Mrs. C._—“What does she mean by paper? Their programmes?”
_Patience._—“Painted parchment squares.”
_Mrs. P._—“Oh, she means they’d better stay at home and play cards.”
_Mrs. H._—“Are they likely to get their morals corrupted at that show?”
_Patience._—“He who tickleth the ass to start a braying, fain would
carol with his brother.”
_Mrs. C._—“If the singing is as bad as it usually is at that place, I
don’t wonder at her disapproval. But what about the girls, Patience?”
_Patience._—“My pettieskirt ye may borrow for the brazens.”
_Mrs. P._—“Now, what is a pettieskirt? Is it really a skirt or is it
that ruff they used to wear around the neck?”
_Patience._—“Nay, my bib covereth the neckband.”
_Mrs. H._—“Then, where do you wear your pettieskirt?”
_Patience._—“’Neath my kirtle.”
_Mrs. C._—“Is that the same as girdle? Let’s look it up.”
_Patience._—“Art fashioning thy new frock?”
_Mrs. H._—“I predict that Patience will found a new style—Puritan.”
_Patience._—“’Twere a virtue, egad!”
_Mrs. H._—“You evidently don’t think much of our present style. In your
day women dressed more modestly, didn’t they?”
_Patience._—“Many’s the wench who pulled her points to pop. But ah, the
locks were combed to satin! He who bent above might see himself
reflected.”
_Mrs. C._—“What were the young girls of your day like, Patience?”
_Patience._—“A silly lot, as these of thine. Wait!”
There was no movement of the board for about three minutes, and then:
“’Tis a sorry lot, not harming but boresome!”
_Mrs. H._—“Oh, Patience, have you been to the theater?”
_Patience._—“A peep in good cause could surely ne’er harm the godly.”
_Mrs. C._—“How do you think we ought to look after those men?”
_Patience._—“Thine ale is drunk at the hearth. Surely he who stops to
sip may bless the firelog belonging to thee.”
When the men returned home they agreed with the verdict of Patience
before they had heard it, that it was a “tame” show, “not harming, but
boresome.”
The exclamation of Mrs. Curran, “Let’s look it up,” in the extract just
quoted from the record, has been a frequent one in this circle since
Patience came. So many of her words are obsolete that her friends are
often compelled to search through the dictionaries and glossaries for
their meaning. Her reference to articles of dress—wimple, kirtle,
pettieskirt, points and so on, had all to be “looked up.” Once Patience
began an evening with this remark:
“The cockshut finds ye still peering to find the other land.”
“What is cock’s hut?” asked Mrs. H.
“Nay,” said Patience, “Cock-shut. Thee needeth light, but cockshut
bringeth dark.”
“Cockshut must mean shutting up the cock at night,” suggested a visitor.
“Aye, and geese, too, then could be put to quiet,” Patience exclaimed.
“Wouldst thou wish for cockshut?”
Search revealed that cockshut was a term anciently applied to a net used
for catching woodcock, and it was spread at nightfall, hence cockshut
acquired also the meaning of early evening. Shakespeare uses the term
once, in Richard III., in the phrase, “Much about cockshut time,” but it
is a very rare word in literature, and probably has not been used, even
colloquially, for centuries.
There are many such words used by Patience—relics of an age long past.
The writer was present at a sitting when part of a romantic story-play
of medieval days was being received on the board. One of the characters
in the story spoke of herself as “playing the jane-o’-apes.” No one
present had ever heard or seen the word. Patience was asked if it had
been correctly received, and she repeated it. Upon investigation it was
found that it is a feminine form of the familiar jackanapes, meaning a
silly girl. Massinger used it in one of his plays in the seventeenth
century, but that appears to be the only instance of its use in
literature.
These words may be not unknown to many people, but the point is that
they were totally strange to those at the board, including Mrs.
Curran—words that could not possibly have come out of the consciousness
or subconsciousness of any one of them. The frequent use of such words
helps to give verity to the archaic tongue in which she expresses her
thoughts, and the consistent and unerring use of this obsolete form of
speech is, next to the character of her literary production, the
strongest evidence of her genuineness. It will be noticed, too, that the
language she uses in conversation is quite different from that in her
literary compositions, although there are definite similarities which
seem to prove that they come from the same source. In this also she is
wholly consistent: for it is unquestionably true that no poet ever
talked as he wrote. Every writer uses colloquial words and idioms in
conversation that he would never employ in literature. No matter what
his skill or genius as a writer may be, he talks “just like other
people.” Patience Worth in this, as in other things, is true to her
character.
* * * * *
It may be repeated that in all this matter—and it is but a skimming of
the mass—one may readily discern a distinct and striking personality;
not a wraith-like, formless, evanescent shadow, but a personality that
can be clearly visualized. One can easily imagine Patience Worth to be a
woman of the Puritan period, with, however, none of the severe and
gloomy beliefs of the Puritan—a woman of a past age stepped out of an
old picture and leaving behind her the material artificialities of paint
and canvas. From her speech and her writings one may conceive her to be
a woman of Northern England, possibly: for she uses a number of ancient
words that are found to have been peculiar to the Scottish border; a
country woman, perhaps, for in all of her communications there are only
two or three references to the city, although her knowledge and love of
the drama may be a point against this assumption; a woman who had read
much in an age when books were scarce, and women who could read rarer
still: for although she frequently expresses disdain of book learning,
she betrays a large accumulation of such learning, and a copious
vocabulary, as well as a degree of skill in its use, that could only
have been acquired from much study of books. “I have bought beads from a
pack,” she says, “but ne’er yet have I found a peddler of words.”
And then, after we have mentally materialized this woman, and given her
a habitation and a time, Patience speaks again, and all has vanished.
“Not so,” she said to one who questioned her, “I be abirthed awhither
and abide me where.” And again she likened herself to the wind. “I be
like the wind,” she said, “who leaveth not track, but ever ’bout, and
yet like to the rain who groweth grain for thee to reap.” At other times
she has indicated that she has never had a physical existence. I have
quoted her saying: “I do plod a twist o’ a path and it hath run from
then till now.” At a later time she was asked what she meant by that.
She answered:
“Didst e’er to crack a stone, and lo, a worm aharded? (a fossil). ’Tis
so, for list ye, I speak like ye since time began.”
It is thus she reveals herself clearly to the mind, but when one
attempts to approach too closely, to lay a hand upon her, as it were,
she invariably recedes into the unfathomable deeps of mysticism.
THE POETRY
Am I a broken lyre,
Who, at the Master’s touch,
Respondeth with a tinkle and a whir?
Or am I strung in full
And at His touch give forth the full chord?
—PATIENCE WORTH.
As the reader will have observed, the poetry of Patience Worth is not
confined to a single theme, nor to a group of related themes. It covers
a range that extends from inanimate things through all the gradations of
material life and on into the life of spiritual realms as yet uncharted.
It includes poems of sentiment, poems of nature, poems of humanity; but
the larger number deal with man in relation to the mysteries of the
beyond. All of them evince intellectual power, knowledge of nature and
human nature, and skill in construction. With the exception of one or
two little jingles, the poems are rhymeless. Patience may not wholly
agree with Milton that rhyme “is the invention of a barbarous age to set
off wretched matter and lame metre,” but she seldom uses it, finding in
blank verse a medium that suits all her moods, making it at will as
light and ethereal as a summer cloud or as solemn and stately as a
Wagnerian march. She molds it to every purpose, and puts it to new and
strange uses. Who, for example, ever saw a lullaby in blank verse? It
is, I believe, quite without precedent in literature, and yet it would
not be easy to find a lullaby more daintily beautiful than the one which
will be presented later on.
In all of her verse, the iambic measure is dominant, but it is not
maintained with monotonous regularity. She appreciates the value of an
occasional break in the rhythm, and she understands the uses of the
pause. But she declines to be bound by any rules of line measurement.
Many of her lines are in accord with the decasyllabic standard of heroic
verse, but in no instance is that standard rigidly adhered to: some of
the lines contain as many as sixteen syllables, others drop to eight or
even six.
It should be explained, however, that the poetry as it comes from the
ouija board is not in verse form. There is nothing in the dictation to
indicate where a line should begin or where end, nor, of course, is
there any punctuation, there being no way by which the marks of
punctuation could be denoted. There is usually, however, a perceptible
pause at the end of a sentence. The words are taken down as they are
spelled on the board, without any attempt, at the time, at versification
or punctuation. After the sitting, the matter is punctuated and lined as
nearly in accord with the principles of blank verse construction as the
abilities of the editor will permit. It is not claimed that the line
arrangement of the verses as they are here presented is perfect; but
that is a detail of minor importance, and for whatever technical
imperfections there may be in this particular, Patience Worth is not
responsible. The important thing is that every word is given exactly as
it came from the board, without the alteration of a syllable, and
without changing the position or even the spelling of a single one.
As a rule, Patience spells the words in accordance with the standards of
today, but there are frequent departures from those standards, and many
times she has spelled a word two or three different ways in the same
composition. For example, she will spell “spin” with one n or two n’s
indifferently: she will spell “friend” correctly, and a little later
will add an e to it; she will write “boughs” and “bows” in the same
composition. On the other hand she invariably spells tongue “tung,” and
positively refuses to change it, and this is true also of the word
bosom, which she spells “busom.”
There are indications that the poems and the stories are in course of
composition at the time they are being produced on the ouija board.
Indeed, one can almost imagine the author dictating to an amanuensis in
the manner that was necessary before stenography was invented, when
every word had to be spelled out in longhand. At times the little table
will move with such rapidity that it is very difficult to follow its
point with the eye and catch the letter indicated. Then there will be a
pause, and the pointer will circle around the board, as if the composer
were trying to decide upon a word or a phrase. Occasionally four or five
words of a sentence will be given, then suddenly the planchette will
dart up to the word “No,” and begin the sentence again with different
and, it is to be presumed, more satisfactory words.
Sometimes, though rarely, Patience will begin a composition and suddenly
abandon it with an exclamation of displeasure, or else take up a new and
entirely different subject. Once she began a prose composition thus:
“I waste my substance on the weaving of web and the storing of pebbles.
When shall I build mine house, and when fill the purse? Oh, that my
fancy weaved not but web, and desire pricketh not but pebble!”
There was an impatient dash across the board, and then she exclaimed:
“Bah, ’tis bally reasoning! I plucked a gosling for a goose, and found
down enough to pad the parson’s saddle skirts!”
At another time she began:
“Rain, art thou the tears wept a thousand years agone, and soaked into
the granite walls of dumb and feelingless races? Now——”
There was a long pause and then came this lullaby:
Oh, baby, soft upon my breast press thou,
And let my fluttering throat spell song to thee,
A song that floweth so, my sleeping dear:
Oh, buttercups of eve,
Oh, willynilly,
My song shall flutter on,
Oh, willynilly.
I climb a web to reach a star,
And stub my toe against a moonbeam
Stretched to bar my way,
Oh, willynilly.
A love-puff vine shall shelter us,
Oh, baby mine;
And then across the sky we’ll float
And puff the stars away.
Oh, willynilly, on we’ll go,
Willynilly floating.
“Thee art o’erfed on pudding,” she added to Mrs. Curran. “This sauce is
but a butter-whip.”
And now, having briefly referred to the technique of the poems, and
explained the manner in which they are transmitted we will make a more
systematic presentation of them. For a beginning, nothing better could
be offered than the Spinning Wheel lullaby heretofore referred to.
In it we can see the mother of, perhaps, the Puritan days, seated at the
spinning wheel while she sings to the child which is supposed to lie in
the cradle by her side. One can view through the open door the
old-fashioned flower garden bathed in sunlight, can hear the song of the
bird and the hum of the bee, and through it all the sound of the wheel.
But!—it is the song of a childless woman to an imaginary babe: Patience
has declared herself a spinster.
Strumm, strumm!
Ah, wee one,
Croon unto the tendrill tipped with sungilt,
Nodding thee from o’er the doorsill there.
Strumm, strumm!
My wheel shall sing to thee.
I pull the flax as golden as thy curl,
And sing me of the blossoms blue,
Their promise, like thine eyes to me.
Strumm, strumm!
’Tis such a merry tale I spinn.
Ah, wee one, croon unto the honey bee
Who diggeth at the rose’s heart.
Strumm, strumm!
My wheel shall sing to thee,
Heart-blossom mine. The sunny morn
Doth hum with lovelilt, dear.
I fain would leave my spinning
To the spider climbing there,
And bruise thee, blossom, to my breast.
Strumm, strumm!
What fancies I do weave!
Thy dimpled hand doth flutter, dear,
Like a petal cast adrift
Upon the breeze.
Strumm, strumm!
’Tis faulty spinning, dear.
A cradle built of thornwood,
A nest for thee, my bird.
I hear thy crooning, wee one,
And ah, this fluttering heart.
Strumm, strumm!
How ruthlessly I spinn!
My wheel doth wirr an empty song, my dear,
For tendrill nodding yonder
Doth nod in vain, my sweet;
And honey bee would tarry not
For thee; and thornwood cradle swayeth
Only to the loving of the wind!
Strumm, strumm!
My wheel still sings to thee,
Thou birdling of my fancy’s realm!
Strumm, strumm!
An empty dream, my dear!
The sun doth shine, my bird;
Or should he fail, he shineth here
Within my heart for thee!
Strumm, strumm!
My wheel still sings to thee.
Who would say that rhyme or measured lines would add anything to this
unique song? It is filled with the images which are the essentials of
true poetry, and it has the rhythm which sets the imagery to music and
gives it vitality. “The tendrill tipped with sungilt,” “the sunny morn
doth hum with lovelilt,” “thy dimpled hand doth flutter like a petal
cast adrift upon the breeze”—these are figures that a Shelley would not
wish to disown. There is a lightness and delicacy, too, that would seem
to be contrary to our notions of the adaptiveness of blank verse. But
these are technical features. It is the pathos of the song, the
expression of the mother-yearning instinctive in every woman, which
gives it value to the heart.
And yet there is a pleasure expressed in this song, the pleasure of
imagination, which makes the mind’s pictures living realities. In the
poem which follows Patience expresses the feelings of the dreamer who is
rudely awakened from this delightful pastime by the realist who sees but
what his eyes behold:
Athin the even’s hour,
When shadow purpleth the garden wall,
Then sit thee there adream,
And cunger thee from out the pack o’ me.
Yea, speak thou, and tell to me
What ’tis thou hearest here.
A rustling? Yea, aright!
A murmuring? Yea, aright!
Ah, then, thou sayest, ’tis the leaves
That love one ’pon the other.
Yea, and the murmuring, thou sayest,
Is but the streamlet’s hum.
Nay, nay! For wait thee.
Ayonder o’er the wall doth rise
The white faced Sister o’ the Sky.
And lo, she beareth thee a fairies’ wand,
And showeth thee the ghosts o’ dreams.
Look thou! Ah, look! A one
Doth step adown the path! The rustle?
‘Tis the silken whisper o’ her robe.
The hum? The love-note o’ her maiden dream.
See thee, ah, see! She bendeth there,
And branch o’ bloom doth nod and dance.
Hark, the note! A robin’s cheer?
Ah, Brother, nay.
’Tis the whistle o’ her lover’s pipe.
See, see, the path e’en now
Doth show him, tall and dark, aside the gate.
What! What! Thou sayest
’Tis but the rustle o’ the leaves,
And brooklet’s humming o’er its stony path!
Then hush! Yea, hush thee!
Hush and leave me here!
The fairy wand hath broke, and leaves
Stand still, and note hath ceased,
And maiden vanished with thy word.
Thou, thou hast broke the spell,
And dream hath heard thy word and fled.
Yea, sunk, sunk upon the path,
They o’ my dreams—slain, slain,
And dead with but thy word.
Ah, leave me here and go,
For Earth doth hold not
E’en my dreaming’s wraith.
In previous chapters I have spoken of the wit and humor of Patience
Worth. In only one instance has she put humor into verse, and that I
have already quoted; but at times her poetry has an airy playfulness of
form that gives the effect of humor, even though the theme and the
intent may be serious. Here is an example:
Whiff, sayeth the wind,
And whiffing on its way, doth blow a merry tale.
Where, in the fields all furrowed and rough with corn,
Late harvested, close-nestled to a fibrous root,
And warmed by the sun that hid from night there-neath,
A wee, small, furry nest of root mice lay.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
I found this morrow, on a slender stem,
A glory of the morn, who sheltered in her wine-red throat
A tiny spinning worm that wove the livelong day,—
Long after the glory had put her flag to mast—
And spun the thread I followed to the dell,
Where, in a gnarled old oak, I found a grub,
Who waited for the spinner’s strand
To draw him to the light.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
Whiff, sayeth the wind!
I blew a beggar’s rags, and loving
Was the flapping of the cloth. And singing on
I went to blow a king’s mantle ’bout his limbs,
And cut me on the crusted gilt.
And tainted did I stain the rose until she turned
A snuffy brown and rested her poor head
Upon the rail along the path.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
I blow me ’long the coast,
And steal from out the waves their roar;
And yet from out the riffles do I steal
The rustle of the leaves, who borrow of the riffle’s song
From me at summer-tide. And then
I pipe unto the sands, who dance and creep
Before me in the path. I blow the dead
And lifeless earth to dancing, tingling life,
And slap thee to awake at morn.
Whiff, sayeth the wind.
There is a vivacity in this odd conceit that in itself brings a smile,
which is likely to broaden at the irony in the suggestion of the wind
cutting itself on the crusted gilt of a king’s mantle. Equally spirited
in movement, but vastly different in character, is the one which
follows:
Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going?
Art dawdling time away adown the primrose path
And wishing golden dust to fancied value?
Ah, catch the milch-dewed air, breathe deep
The clover-scented breath across the field,
And feed upon sweet-rooted grasses
Thou hast idly plucked.
Come, Brother, then let’s on together.
Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going?
Is here thy path adown the hard-flagged pave,
Where, bowed, the workers blindly shuffle on;
And dumbly stand in gullies bound,
The worn, bedogged, silent-suffering beast,
Far driven past his due?
And thou, beloved, hast thy burden worn thee weary?
Come, Brother, then let’s on together.
Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going?
Hast thou begun the tottering of age,
And doth the day seem over-long to thee?
Art fretting for release, and dost thou lack
The power to weave anew life’s tangled skein?
Come, Brother, then let’s on together.
The second line of this will at once recall Shakespeare’s “primrose path
of dalliance,” and it is one of the rare instances in which Patience may
be said to have borrowed a metaphor; but in the line which follows, “and
wishing golden dust to fancied value,” she puts the figure to better use
than he in whom it originated. Beyond this line there is nothing
specially remarkable in this poem, and it is given mainly to show the
versatility of the composer, and as another example of her ability to
present vivid and striking pictures.
* * * * *
Reference has been made to the love of nature and the knowledge of
nature betrayed in these poems. Even in those of the most spiritual
character nature is drawn upon for illustrations and symbols, and the
lines are lavishly strewn with material metaphor and similes that open
up the gates of understanding. This picture of winter, for example,
brings out the landscape it describes with the vividness and reality of
a stereoscope, and yet it is something more than a picture:
Snow tweaketh ’neath thy feet,
And like a wandering painter stalketh Frost,
Daubing leaf and lichen. Where flowed a cataract
And mist-fogged stream, lies silvered sheen,
Stark, dead and motionless. I hearken
But to hear the she-e-e-e of warning wind,
Fearful lest I waken Nature’s sleeping.
Await ye! Like a falcon loosed
Cometh the awakening. Then returneth Spring
To nestle in the curving breast of yonder hill,
And sets to rest like the falcon seeketh
His lady’s outstretched arm.
And here is another picture of winter, painted with a larger brush and
heavier pigment, but expressing the same thought, that life doth ever
follow death: