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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 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!

TELLING THE BEES.1

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.

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.

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!"

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day,
While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

Thereat the Abbot paused,-the chain whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;
And, looking from the casement, saw below
A wretched woman, with grey hair a-flow,
And withered hands held up to him, who cried
For alms as one who might not be denied.
She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave
His life for ours, my child from bondage save,—

My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves
Lap the white walls of Tunis!"-"What I can
I give," Tritemius said: "my prayers.”—“ O man
Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold,
"Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold.
Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice;
Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies."

"Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door
None go unfed; hence are we always poor:
A single soldo is our only store.

Thou hast our prayers;-what can we give thee more?"

"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks
On either side of the great crucifix.

God well may spare them on his errands sped,
Or He can give you golden ones instead."

Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy word,
Woman, so be it! (Our most gracious Lord,
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
Pardon me if a human soul I prize
Above the gifts upon his altar piled!)

Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."

But his hand trembled as the holy alms
He placed within the beggar's eager palms;
And, as she vanished down the linden shade,
He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.

So the day passed, and when the twilight came
He woke to find the chapel all aflame,
And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold
Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!

ABRAHAM DAVENPORT.

In the old days (a custom laid aside

With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
Their wisest men to make the public laws.

And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,

Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.

'Twas on a May-day of the far old year
Seventeen hundred eighty that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell,-
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs
The crater's sides from the red hell below.

Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls
Roosted; the cattle at the pasture-bars

Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labour died ;

Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern

As Justice and inexorable Law.

Meanwhile in the old State-House, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,

Trembling beneath their legislative robes.
"It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"
Some said; and then, as if with one accord,
All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice

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