Since we parted, a month had passed,
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!"
IN the outskirts of the village,
On the river's winding shores,
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.
One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told,
Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.
Deftly set to Celtic music,
At his violin's sound they grew,
Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion's fable true.
Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant !
Pass in jerkin green along,
With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
And thy mouth as full of song.
Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,
With his fiddle and his pack ;
Little dreamed the village Saxons
Of the myriads at his back.
How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
Delved by day and sang by night,
With a hand that never wearied,
And a heart forever light,
Still the gay tradition mingles
With a record grave and drear,
Like the rolic air of Cluny,
With the solemn march of Mear.
When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
Made the sweet May woodlands glad,
And the Aronia by the river
Lighted up the swarming shad,
And the bulging nets swept shoreward,
With their silver-sided haul,
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
He was merriest of them all.
When, among the jovial huskers,
Love stole in at Labor's side
With the lusty airs of England,
Soft his Celtic measures vied.
Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake,
And the merry fair's carouse;
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
And the Woman of Three Cows,
By the blazing hearths of winter,
Pleasant seemed his simple tales,
Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
And the mountain myths of Wales.
How the souls in Purgatory
Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder,
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.
Of the fiddler who at Tara
Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their moorland rings!
Jolliest of our birds of singing,
Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
"Hush!" he'd say, " the tipsy fairies! Hear the little folks in drink!"
Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
Singing through the ancient town,
Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
Hath Tradition handed down.
Not a stone his grave discloses
But if yet his spirit walks,
'Tis beneath the trees he planted,
And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks!
Green memorials of the gleeman!
Linking still the river-shores,
With their shadows cast by sunset,
Stand Huge Tallant's sycamores!
When the Father of his Country
Through the north-land riding came,
And the roofs were starred with banners,
And the steeples rang acclaim,-
When each war-scarred Continental,
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,
Waved his rusted sword in welcome,
And shot off his old king's arm,-
Slowly passed that august Presence
Down the thronged and shouting street;
Village girls, as white as angels,
Scattering flowers around his feet.
Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow
Deepest fell, his rein he drew:
On his stately head, uncovered,
Cool and soft the west wind blew.
And he stood up in his stirrups,
Looking up and looking down
On the hills of Gold and Silver
Rimming round the little town,—
On the river, full of sunshine,
To the lap of greenest vales
Winding down from wooded headlands,
Willow-skirted, white with sails.
And he said, the landscape sweeping
Slowly with his ungloved hand,
"I have seen no prospect fairer
In this goodly Eastern land.”
Then the bugles of his escort
Stirred to life the cavalcade :
And that head, so bare and stately,
Vanished down the depths of shade.
Ever since, in town and farm-house,
Life has had its ebb and flow;
Thrice hath passed the human harvest
To its garner green and low.
But the trees the gleeman planted,
Through the changes, changless stand;
As the marble calm of Tadmor
Marks the desert's shifting sand.
Still the level moon at rising
Silvers o'er each stately shaft;
Still beneath them, half in shadow,
Singing, glides the pleasure craft.
Still beneath them, arın-enfolded,
Love and Youth together stray;
While, as heart to heart beats faster,
More and more their feet delay.
Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
On the open hill-side wrought,
Singing, as he drew his stitches,
Songs his German masters taught,—
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