As you lie and listen, in the golden tenor of the hive-bee's hum seems diffused the wide whisper of continuous gladness; and giving the innermost note of summer and of noon, the booming bass of the humble-bee blazons abroad all poetry and beauty and sumptuous delight. "Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone, Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days and solid banks of flowers, Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wilderness found, Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure." COUNTESS LAURA. It was a dreary day in Padua. The Countess Laura, for a single year Fernando's wife, upon her bridal bed, Like an uprooted lily on the snow, The withered outcast of a festival, Lay dead. She died of some uncertain ill, That struck her almost on her wedding-day, And clung to her, and dragged her slowly down, Thinning her cheeks and pinching her full lips, Till, in her chance, it seemed that with a year Full half a century was overpast. In vain had Paracelsus taxed his art, And feigned a knowledge of her malady; In vain had all the doctors, far and near, Gathered around the mystery of her bed, Draining her veins, her husband's treasury, And physic's jargon, in a fruitless quest For causes equal to the dread result. The Countess only smiled, when they were gone, Hugged her fair body with her little hands, And turned upon her pillows wearily, As if she fain would sleep, no common sleep, But the long, breathless slumber of the grave. She hinted nothing. Feeble as she was, The rack could not have wrung her secret out The Bishop, when he shrived her, coming forth, Cried, in a voice of heavenly ecstasy, "O blessed soul! with nothing to confess, Save virtues and good deeds, which she mistakes-- So humble is she--for our human sins!" Praying for death, she tossed upon her bed, Day after day,--as might a shipwrecked bark That rocks upon one billow, and can make No onward motion towards her port of hope. At length, one morn, when those around her said, "Surely the Countess mends, so fresh a light Beams from her eyes and beautifies her face,"-- One morn in spring, when every flower of earth Was opening to the sun, and breathing up Its votive incense, her impatient soul Opened itself, and so exhaled to heaven. When the Count heard it, he reeled back a pace; Then turned with anger on the messenger; Then craved his pardon, and wept out his heart Before the menial: tears, ah, me! such tears As Love sheds only, and Love only once. Then he bethought him, "Shall this wonder die And leave behind no shadow? not a trace Of all the glory that environed her, That mellow nimbus circling round my star?" So, with his sorrow glooming in his face, He paced along his gallery of Art,