'I will not stay my journey,
Nor halt by any town,
Near any sparkling fountain,
Where the waters wimple down :
The mothers coming to the well
Would know the babes they bore ;
The wives would clasp their husbands,
Nor could I part them more.'

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
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless, on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

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?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows,* borne aloft,

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies :
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft ;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

J. Keats.

CLXXXIV.

SYMBOLS OF VICTORY.

ELLOW leaves on the ash-tree,
Soft glory in the air,

And the streaming radiance of sunshine
On the leaden clouds over there.

At a window a child's mouth smiling,
Overhung with tearful eyes

At the flying rainy landscape

And the sudden opening skies.

Angels hanging from heaven,
A whisper in dying ears,
And the promise of great salvation
Shining on mortal fears.

A dying man on his pillow

Whose white soul, fled to his face,
Puts on her garment of joyfulness
And stretches to Death's embrace.

* Sallows, trees of the willow kind, genus Salix.

Passion, rapture, and blindness,
Yearning, aching, and fears,
And Faith and Duty gazing
With stedfast eyes upon tears,

I see, or the glory blinds me,
Of a soul divinely fair,

Peace after great tribulation,
And Victory hung in the air.

CLXXXV.

W. C. Roscoe.

TELLING THE BEES.*

ERE 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'er-run,
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.

*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,
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.

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.'

* 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
Sang to the bees stealing out and in.

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

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

J. G. Whittier.

CLXXXVI.

LINES

WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING,

HEARD a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths,
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure :—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.