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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!  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!"Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.

The lyrical form of this poem is abab.

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John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the Unit…

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