So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town,

From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down.

Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth

And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind,

Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.

In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high

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Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly; But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight,

And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night!

Day by day the Indian tiger
Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
Round and round the jungle-serpent
Near and nearer circles swept.
'Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,
Pray to-day!' the soldier said;
'To-morrow, death's between us
And the wrong and shame we dread.'

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing

Filled the pauses of their prayer.
Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
With her ear unto the ground:
'Dinna ye hear it? dinna ye hear it?
The pipes o' Havelock sound!'

Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
Hushed the wife her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true;
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing,

Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call: Hark! hear ye no MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!'

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30

40

1 It is in strict accordance with the facts of the rescue. In the distance the beleaguered garrison heard the stern and vengeful slogan of the MacGregors, but when the troops of Havelock came in view of the Eng. lish flag still floating from the Residency, the pipers struck up the immortal air of Burns, Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot.' (WHITTIER, in a letter to Lowell, April 10, 1858.)

A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. (WHITTIER.)

The place Whittier had in mind in writing 'Telling the Bees' was his birthplace. There were bee-hives on the garden terrace near the well-sweep, occupied perhaps by the descendants of Thomas Whittier's bees. The approach to the house from over the northern shoulder of Job's Hill by a path that was in constant use in his boyhood and is still in existence, is accurately described in the poem. The gap in the old wall' is still to be seen, and the stepping-stones in the shallow brook' are still in use. His sister's garden was down by the brook-side in front of the house, and her daffodils are perpetuated and may now be found in their season each year in that place. The red-barred gate, the poplars, the cattle yard with 'the white horns tossing above the wall,' these were all part of Whittier's boy life on the old farm. (Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 414-415.)

See also Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 17-18.

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.

MY PSALM

I MOURN no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away

I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play

Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May

Blow through the autumn morn;

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BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE

JOHN BROWN of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:

I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay.

But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,

With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!'

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;

And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh.

Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,

As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child!

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart;

And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart.

That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,

And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent !