For the naphthaline river Of a water that flows, Down under ground. And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy, And narrow my bed; For man never slept In a different bed And, to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed. My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting, its rosesIts old agitations Of myrtles and roses: For now, while so quietly A holier odor About it, of pansies A rosemary odor, Commingled with pansies With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies. And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie-Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie. 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; Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, 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; Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, 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, Just the same as a month before, The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,- A Tryst Before them, under the garden wall, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Trembling, I listened: the summer sun For I knew she was telling the bees of one Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill The old man sat; and the chore-girl still And the song she was singing ever since "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" IIII John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892] A TRYST I WILL not break the tryst, my dear, You went into the voiceless night; Your path led far away. Did you forget me, Heart's Delight, As night forgets the day? Sometimes I think that you would speak If still you held me dear; But space is vast, and I am weak— Perchance I do not hear, Surely, howe'er remote the star Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908] LOVE'S RESURRECTION DAY ROUND among the quiet graves, Love went grieving,-Love who saves: Did the sleepers know? At his touch the flowers awoke, At his tender call Birds into sweet singing broke, From the blooming, bursting sod All Love's dead arose, And went flying up to God By a way Love knows. Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908] HEAVEN ONLY to find Forever, blest In passion's dreamy calm! Only to meet and never part, To sleep and never wake, Heart unto heart and soul to soul, Dead for each other's sake. Martha Gilbert Dickinson [18 JANETTE'S HAIR Он, loosen the snood that you wear, Janette, |