TELLING THE BEES
by: John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-1892)
- 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'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.
-
- 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:--
- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
- Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
"Telling the Bees" is
reprinted from The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf
Whittier. Ed. H.E.S. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894. |
MORE POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |
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