136

BEREAVED.

The passionate humming-birds cling To the honeysuckles’ hearts; In and out at the open window The twittering house-wren darts, And the sun is bright. June is young, and warm, and sweet; The morning is gay and new; Glimmers yet the grass of the door-yard, Pearl-gray with fragrant dew, And the sun is bright. From the mill, upon the stream, A busy murmur swells; On to the pasture go the cattle, Lowing, with tinkling bells, And the sun is bright. She gathers his playthings up, And dreamily puts them by; Children are playing in the meadow, She hears their joyous cry, And the sun is bright. 137 She sits and clasps her brow, And looks with swollen eyes On the landscape that reels and dances,–– To herself she softly cries, And the sun is bright.

138

THE SNOW-BIRDS.

The lonesome graveyard lieth, A deep with silent waves Of night-long snow, all white, and billowed Over the hidden graves. The snow-birds come in the morning, Flocking and fluttering low, And light on the graveyard brambles, And twitter there in the snow. The Singer, old and weary, Looks out from his narrow room: “Ah, me! but my thoughts are snow-birds, Haunting a graveyard gloom, “Where all the Past is buried And dead, these many years, Under the drifted whiteness Of frozen falls of tears. “Poor birds! that know not summer, Nor sun, nor flowèrs fair,–– Only the graveyard brambles, And graves, and winter air!”

139

VAGARY.