IN OLD PONKAPOAG 35 



" The Bemis Place " of the elder days of Ponka- 

 poag village. It seems as if all the lighter, sweeter 

 fancies that laugh or slip, tear in eye, through his 

 verse, whirled like rose petals on summer winds 

 or danced like butterflies into the little valley on 

 which the westward study windows looked. 

 Through this, right in the foreground, flows 

 Ponkapoag brook, and on it falls slowly into de- 

 cay an ancient mill, a relic of the early days of the 

 village. The old dam no longer restrains the 

 water which gurgles along the stones below it, 

 humming to itself a quatrain which never was 

 meant for it, but which voices the fate of the shal- 

 low mill pond, which has been empty for so many 

 long years that it is no longer a pond but a tiny 

 meadow in which cattle cool their feet and feed 

 contentedly. Here the spendthrift brook sings 

 contentedly : 



"The fault's not mine, you understand; 

 God shaped my palm, so I can hold 

 But little water in my hand 

 And not much gold." 



In the meadow and along the brookside blooms 

 to-day the Habenaria psycodes, the smaller purple- 



