The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics Part 14

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.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed,-- 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 ch.o.r.e-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 ch.o.r.e-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!"

J.G. WHITTIER.

Katie.

It may be through some foreign grace, And unfamiliar charm of face; It may be that across the foam Which bore her from her childhood's home, By some strange spell, my Katie brought Along with English creeds and thought-- Entangled in her golden hair-- Some English sunshine, warmth, and air!

I cannot tell,--but here to-day, A thousand billowy leagues away From that green isle whose twilight skies No darker are than Katie's eyes, She seems to me, go where she will, An English girl in England still!

I meet her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the b.u.t.tercup!

I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way!

As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath; And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn!