There haply with her jewelled hands
    She smooths her silken gown,—­
  No more the homespun lap wherein
    I shook the walnuts down.

  The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
    The brown nuts on the hill,
  And still the May-day flowers make sweet
    The woods of Follymill.

  The lilies blossom in the pond,
    The bird builds in the tree,
  The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
    The slow song of the sea.

  I wonder if she thinks of them,
    And how the old time seems,
  If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
    Are sounding in her dreams.

  I see her face, I hear her voice: 
    Does she remember mine? 
  And what to her is now the boy
    Who fed her father’s kine?

  What cares she that the orioles build
    For other eyes than ours,—­
  That other hands with nuts are filled,
    And other laps with flowers?

  O playmate in the golden time! 
    Our mossy seat is green,
  Its fringing violets blossom yet,
    The old trees o’er it lean.

  The winds so sweet with birch and fern
    A sweeter memory blow;
  And there in spring the veeries sing
    The song of long ago.

  And still the pines of Ramoth wood
    Are moaning like the sea,—­
  The moaning of the sea of change
    Between myself and thee!

J.G.  WHITTIER.

The Fire of Driftwood.

DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.

  We sat within the farmhouse old,
    Whose windows, looking o’er the bay,
  Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
    An easy entrance, night and day.

  Not far away we saw the port,
    The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
  The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
    The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

  We sat and talked until the night,
    Descending, filled the little room;
  Our faces faded from the sight,
    Our voices only broke the gloom.

  We spake of many a vanished scene,
    Of what we once had thought and said,
  Of what had been, and might have been,
    And who was changed, and who was dead;

  And all that fills the hearts of friends,
    When first they feel, with secret pain,
  Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
    And never can be one again;

  The first slight swerving of the heart,
    That words are powerless to express,
  And leave it still unsaid in part,
    Or say it in too great excess.

  The very tones in which we spake
    Had something strange, I could but mark;
  The leaves of memory seemed to make
    A mournful rustling in the dark.

  Oft died the words upon our lips,
    As suddenly, from out the fire
  Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
    The flames would leap and then expire.

  And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
    We thought of wrecks upon the main,
  Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
    And sent no answer back again.