Wayside Weeds

He sprang to his feet and fell backward again,
He rolled, and he writhed, and he wriggled with pain.
His friends gathered round him and started aghast,
At seeing a tooth to his nose sticking fast.

“Away,” they cried, smitten with panic, “away!
Let us fly to the distant hills!
The Devil is fighting against us to-day,
Our foemen are shedding their teeth as they say
That the porcupine sheds its quills!”

And shaking with terror away they all ran,
Big Hornet, as usual, leading the van,
While astride on his nose sat the tooth of Saint Anne!

Part III

In the Iroquois towns very deep was the grief,
When they heard of the pitiful plight of their chief;
There wasn’t a woman in all the Five Nations,
Who didn’t indulge in prolonged lamentations.
They tried to relieve him, but tried all in vain,
The tenderest touch produced exquisite pain:
The med’cine men tried incantations and sorceries,
And yet, though their magic as strong as a hawser is,
The tooth wouldn’t budge for the best of the lot;
The more they incanted the tighter it got.
A Dutchman from Albany came to their aid,
Who had once been a student of medicine at Leyden;
He practised in vain each resource of his trade,
And swore that the tooth by the foul fiend was made,
While its carious cavity was, so he said,
A hole for the Devil to hide in.
Big Hornet meanwhile grew haggard and grey,
With grief and chagrin he was wasting away;
His friends found their efforts all powerless to save
Their chief in his rapid descent to the grave;
There was nobody able to set the tooth free,
It clung like a little Old Man of the Sea!
It happened one day there was brought to the town
A captive French priest in a shabby black gown;
He had very black eyes and a rather red nose,
Wore shoes with steel buckles, and very square toes;
He’d a stoop in the shoulder, was yellow of skin,
And a week’s growth of bristles disfigured his chin.
Alas and alack! it was Father Le Cocq:
The Iroquois wolves had both harried the flock
And kidnapped the shepherd – now doomed to be fried as
Soon as it suited the heathen Oneidas!
Now, just as a drowning man grabs at a straw,
His aid was besought by the favourite squaw
Of the sick man – no doubt at some saint’s kind suggestion
To specify which is quite out of the question.
“O Frenchman, remove the excrescence that grows
So horribly tight on the bridge of his nose,
And home to your friends you shall safely return
Instead of remaining among us to burn!”
Thus urged, the good Jesuit followed the squaw;
But oh! his bewilderment, wonder and awe,
No tongue can describe, and no pencil can paint,
When lifting his hands in amazement he saw
On the nose of the red-skin the tooth of the saint.
But Father Le Cocq wasn’t long at a loss;
He made on the relic the sign of the cross,
When, wondrous to hear and amazing to tell,
The tooth from the nose incontinent fell.
And the chief, from that moment, began to get well!
My story is told. There’s no more to relate.
The Iroquois sent back the Father in state;
They feasted him daily as long as he’d tarry,
Then gave him more furs than he knew how to carry,
And safe in his bosom, thrice fortunate man,
He bore the back tooth of the blessed Saint Anne!
As for Little White Crow from that day to the end
Of his life he was known as the “Frenchman’s best friend”;
A friend of French missions he called himself, and he
Without any doubt was a friend of French brandy.
At the close of a well spent career the old man had a
Collection of scalps quite unequalled in Canada:
But never again did he venture to sneer
At the bones of the saints, looked they never so queer.
He often would say that his good luck began,
On the day he received the back tooth of Saint Anne;
And for all his successes he piously thanked it. He
Died full of years in the odour of sanctity.

    1878.

Consider the Lilies of the Field[1 - Awarded the prize for English verse in the University of Toronto in 1865.]

O weary child of toil and care,
Trembling at every cloud that lowers,
Come and behold how passing fair
Thy God hath made the flowers.

From every hillside’s sunny slope,
From every forest’s leafy shade
The flowers, sweet messengers of hope,
Bid thee “Be not afraid.”