Smell the woodbine and the may;
Mark, upon a sunny day,
Sated from their blossoms rise,
Honey-bees and butterflies.
Let me hear, O! let me hear,
Sitting by my buried year,
Finches chirping to their young,
And the little noises flung
Out of clefts where rabbits play,
Or from falling water-spray;
And the gracious echoes woke
By man's work: the woodman's stroke,
Shout of shepherd, whistlings blithe.
And the whetting of the scythe;
Let this be, lest shut and furled
From the well-beloved world,
I forget her yearnings old,
And her troubles manifold,
Strivings sore, submissions meet,
And my pulse no longer beat,
Keeping time and bearing part
With the pulse of her great heart.

"So; swing open door, and shade
Take me; I am not afraid,
For the time will not be long;
Soon I shall have waxen strong--
Strong enough my own to win
From the grave it lies within."
And I entered. On her bier
Quiet lay the buried year;
I sat down where I could see
Life without and sunshine free,
Death within. And I between,
Waited my own heart to wean
From the shroud that shaded her
In the rock-hewn sepulchre--
Waited till the dead should say,
"Heart, be free of me this day"--
Waited with a patient will--
AND I WAIT BETWEEN THEM STILL.

I take the year back to my life and story,
The dead year, and say, "I will share in thy tomb.
'All the kings of the nations lie in glory;'
Cased in cedar, and shut in a sacred gloom!
They reigned in their lifetime with sceptre and diadem,
But thou excellest them;
For life doth make thy grave her oratory,
And the crown is still on thy brow;
'All the kings of the nations lie in glory,'
And so dost thou."

REFLECTIONS.

LOOKING OVER A GATE AT A POOL IN A FIELD.

What change has made the pastures sweet
And reached the daisies at my feet,
And cloud that wears a golden hem?
This lovely world, the hills, the sward--
They all look fresh, as if our Lord
But yesterday had finished them.

And here's the field with light aglow;
How fresh its boundary lime-trees show,
And how its wet leaves trembling shine!
Between their trunks come through to me
The morning sparkles of the sea
Below the level browsing line

I see the pool more clear by half
Than pools where other waters laugh
Up at the breasts o