_Memorial Obituaries Pumphrey Funeral Home Imirie, Jr., George _
(http://obit.pumphreyfuneralhome.com/obit_display.cgi?id=455601&clientid=pumphreyfuneralhom
e&listing=Found)
Telling the Bees, by Whittier
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!"
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