HER

Death-bed.

ER suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,

And breathed the long, long night away

In statue-like repose.

But when the sun in all his state

Illumed the eastern skies,

She passed through Glory's morning gate

And walked in Paradise.

J. ALDRICH.

TELLING THE BEES.

Telling the Bees.

HERE is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;

You can see the gap in the old wall still,

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;

And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;

And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,

Heavy and slow;

And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover's care

From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed,

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at last

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now, the slantwise rain

Of light through the leaves,

The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,

The house and the trees,

The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, – Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,

Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.

TELLING THE BEES.

Trembling, I listened; the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!

Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day;

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away."

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:

66

Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

J. G. WHITTIER.

Katie.

IT may be through some foreign grace,

And unfamiliar charm of face;

It may be that across the foam

Which bore her from her childhood's home,
By some strange spell, my Katie brought
Along with English creeds and thought-
Entangled in her golden hair —

Some English sunshine, warmth, and air!
I cannot tell, but here to-day,
A thousand billowy leagues away
From that green isle whose twilight skies
No darker are than Katie's eyes,

She seems to me, go where she will,
An English girl in England still!

I meet her on the dusty street,
And daisies spring about her feet;
Or, touched to life beneath her tread,
An English cowslip lifts its head;
And, as to do her grace, rise up
The primrose and the buttercup!
I roam with her through fields of cane,
And seem to stroll an English lane,