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TELLING THE BEES.[A]
[Footnote A: A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.]
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 poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and
the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing
above the wall.
There are the bee-hives 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 brook-side
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!”