The windows, rattling in their frames,
    The ocean, roaring up the beach,
  The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
    All mingled vaguely in our speech;

  Until they made themselves a part
    Of fancies floating through the brain,
  The long-lost ventures of the heart,
    That send no answers back again.

  O flames that glowed!  O hearts that yearned! 
    They were indeed too much akin,
  The driftwood fire without that burned,
    The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

H.W.  LONGFELLOW.

A Death-bed.

  Her suffering ended with the day,
    Yet lived she at its close,
  And breathed the long, long night away
    In statue-like repose.

  But when the sun in all his state
    Illumed the eastern skies,
  She passed through Glory’s morning gate
    And walked in Paradise.

J. ALDRICH.

Telling the Bees.

  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 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!