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.
