For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst-
I have drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst,

Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground-
From a cavern not very far

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
Lying, it fancies

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 AnnieDrowned 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;
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.

A Tryst

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 ears sounds on:-

"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

1083

John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892]

A TRYST

I WILL not break the tryst, my dear,
That we have kept so long,
Though winter and its snows are here,
And I've no heart for song.

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.