Part and parcel of her joy, - Oh, for boyhood's time of June, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides ! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; Oh for festal dainties spread, And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. Cheerily, then, my little man, Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 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 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; Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 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 The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, — Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened: the summer sun For I knew she was telling the bees of one Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, The old man sat; and the chore girl still And the song she was singing ever since Long years ago a winter sun It touched the tangled golden curls, For near her stood the little boy Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered;As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt "I'm sorry that I spelt the word: Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. He lives to learn, in life's hard school, Like her, because they love him. |