'I will not stay my journey, W. E. Aytoun. CLXXXIII. TO AUTUMN. EASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run: To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells And still more, later flowers for the bees, Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swathe and all its twinéd flowers; And sometime, like a gleaner, thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook ; Or by a cider-press with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies : J. Keats. CLXXXIV. SYMBOLS OF VICTORY. ELLOW leaves on the ash-tree, And the streaming radiance of sunshine At a window a child's mouth smiling, At the flying rainy landscape And the sudden opening skies. Angels hanging from heaven, A dying man on his pillow Whose white soul, fled to his face, * Sallows, trees of the willow kind, genus Salix. Passion, rapture, and blindness, I see, or the glory blinds me, Peace after great tribulation, CLXXXV. W. C. Roscoe. TELLING THE BEES.* ERE is the place; right over the hill You can see the gap in the old wall still, There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'er-run, A year has gone as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, *It was formerly the custom, on the death of a member of any family in the rural districts of New England, to inform the bees of the event, and to dress their hives in mourning. This was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm 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, 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, Just the same as a month before,— The house and the trees, 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, 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.' * Chore, American form of the word char, work done by the day. But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin The old man sat; and the chore-girl still And the song she was singing ever since 'Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! J. G. Whittier. CLXXXVI. LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING, HEARD a thousand blended notes, To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The birds around me hopped and played, The budding twigs spread out their fan, And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. |