The bee,

All dusty as a miller, takes his toll Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a day

To sun me and do nothing! Nay, I think

Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes The student's wiser business; the brain That forages all climes to line its cells, Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish,

Will not distil the juices it has sucked To the sweet substance of pellucid thought,

Except for him who hath the secret learned

To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take

The winds into his pulses.

't is he!

Hush!

My oriole, my glance of summer fire,
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch,
Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly
wound

About the bough to help his housekeeping,

Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck,

Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, Divines the providence that hides and helps.

Heave, ho! Heave, ho! he whistles as the twine

Slackens its hold; once more, now! and a flash

Lightens across the sunlight to the elm Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt.

Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails My loosened thought with it along the air,

And I must follow, would I ever find The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life.

Where the steep upland dips into the

marsh,

Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing,

Stiffened in coils and runnels down the bank.

The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers

And glints his steely aglets in the

sun,

Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal

Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike

Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and whirl

A rood of silver bellies to the day.

Alas! no acorn from the British oak 'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those rings

Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life

Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed,

Was ever planted here! No darnel fancy

Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields;

With horn and hoof the good old Devil came,

The witch's broomstick was not contraband,

But all that superstition had of fair,
Or piety of native sweet, was doomed.
And if there be who nurse unholy faiths,
Fearing their god as if he were a
wolf

That snuffed round every home and was not seen,

There should be some to watch and keep alive

All beautiful beliefs. And such was that,

By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid

Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished,

As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared

Confess a mortal name, - that faith

which gave

A Hamadryad to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells

The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe,

Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of doors.

In June 't is good to lie beneath a

tree

While the blithe season comforts every sense,

Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart,

Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares,