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!” BURNS[6] ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM No more these simple flowers belong To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song, They bloom the wide world over. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of live together.