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

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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,

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The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

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Just the same as a month before,—

The house and the trees,

The barn's brown gable, that vine by the door,

Nothing changed but the hives of the bees. 36

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,

Draping each hive with a shred of black. 40

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 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!"

1858.

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48

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56

John Greenleaf Whittier.

IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

EMMIE

OUR doctor had call'd in another, I never had

seen him before,

But he sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at the door,

Fresh from the surgery-schools of France and of other lands

Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands!

Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but they said too of him

He was happier using the knife than in trying to save the limb,

And that I can well believe, for he look'd so

coarse and so red,

I could think he was one of those who would break their jests on the dead,

And mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawn'd at his knee

Drench'd with the hellish oorali-that ever

such things should be!

ΙΟ

Here was a boy-I am sure that some of our children would die

But for the voice of Love, and the smile, and the comforting eye

Here was a boy in the ward, every bone seem'd out of its place

Caught in a mill and crush'd-it was all but a hopeless case:

And he handled him gently enough; but his

voice and his face were not kind,

And it was but a hopeless case, he had seen it and made up his mind,

And he said to me roughly "The lad will need little more of your care."

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All the more need," I told him, "to seek the

Lord Jesus in prayer;

They are all his children here, and I pray for them all as my own:"

But he turn'd to me, "Ay, good woman, can

prayer set a broken bone?'

Then he mutter'd half to himself, but I know

that I heard him say

"All very well-but the good Lord Jesus has had his day."

Had? has it come? It has only dawn'd. It

will come by and by.

O how could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world were a lie?

How could I bear with the sights and the

loathsome smells of disease

But that He said “Ye do it to me, when ye do it to these "?

So he went. And we past to this ward where the younger children are laid:

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Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling, our meek little maid;

Empty you see just now! We have lost her who loved her so much

Patient of pain tho' as quick as a sensitive

plant to the touch;

Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often moved

me to tears,

Hers was the gratefullest heart I have found in a child of her years

Nay, you remember our Emmie; you used to send her the flowers;

How she would smile at 'em, play with 'em, talk to 'em hours after hours!

They that can wander at will where the works of the Lord are reveal'd

Little guess what joy can be got from a cowslip out of the field;

Flowers to these "spirits in prison" are all they can know of the spring,

They freshen and sweeten the wards like the waft of an Angel's wing;

And she lay with a flower in one hand and her thin hands crost on her breast

Wan, but as pretty as heart can desire, and we thought her at rest,

Quietly sleeping—so quiet, our doctor said 66 Poor little dear,

Nurse, I must do it to-morrow; she 'll never live thro' it, I fear."

I walk'd with our kindly old doctor as far as the head of the stair,

Then I return'd to the ward; the child did n't see I was there.

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Never since I was nurse, had I been so grieved and so vext!

Emmie had heard him. Softly she call'd from her cot to the next,

"He says I shall never live thro' it, O Annie, what shall I do?"