Ah, his crime? I've forgotten, it was something or other
Judge Lynch's decisions were never compiled;
But we left him, at last, with his forest-born mother,
And she camped by the tree that had strangled her child.
Historically speaking, this is not strictly accurate. Old Mary did not camp "by the tree that had strangled her child," but had him removed near her wigwam on the hill east of Jacksonville, where the vigil that Sam so pathetically described in his poem was carried on. Sam had his version of the affair from W. A. McPherson, another poet and journalist, who must have got his information second hand also, and did not get it very straight. After my explanation of the incident, Simpson saw he was a little off, but said he would let it go at that.
He gave the piece the title of "Jacksonville Mary," at first, but when I expressed dissatisfaction with the name, he changed it to the strikingly appropriate one that it now bears, "The Mother's Vigil." It contained twelve full stanzas originally, of which the following three were the concluding ones:
Alone when the sombre and skeleton branches
Thrilled in the rush of the ship-wrecking storm,
And the glad little children, in hamlets and ranches,
Laughed at the ingle-side, ruddy and warm;
Alone, the sibyls of springtime, returning,
Flung over the forests an emerald mist;
And alone, when the stars of midsummer were burning,
And the musk roses dreamed of the god they had kissed.
While the years have gone on, and the flush times have faded,
Forever the smoke of her vigil ascends,
And the oak, all the while, that poor altar has shaded,
Like a penitent soul that would make some amends.
And still, from his ashes, the dead day arises
A blossoming wonder of beauty and truth,
And the myrtle-wreathed moon, in all gentle disguises,
Remembers, and twines her a chaplet of ruth.
