Part 12 (2/2)

Bee! tell me whence do you come?

Ten fields away, twenty perhaps, Have heard your hum.

If you are from the north, you may Have pa.s.sed my mother's roof of straw Upon your way.

If you came from the south you should Have seen another cottage just Inside the wood.

And should you go back that way, please Carry a message to the house Among the trees.

Say--I will wait her at the rock Beside the stream, this very night At eight o'clock.

And ask your queen when you get home To send my queen the present of A honey-comb.

JAMES STEPHENS

FIREFLIES

Fireflies, Fireflies, little glinting creatures, Making night lovely with a rain of gold, Born of the moonbeams, children all unearthly, Ah how you vanish from a look too bold!

Fireflies, Fireflies, lovely as our dreams are, Sewn with such fancies from the years gone by, Wayward, elusive, as the playful zephyrs, Hiding mid gra.s.ses, gleaming in the sky.

Fireflies, Fireflies, like unto the silent Brown nuns who gather for the dead to pray, As theirs your mission; holy, too, your tapers, Souls of dead flowers lighting on their way.

ANTOINETTE DE COURSEY PATTERSON

JULY MIDNIGHT

Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees, Flicker in the lower branches, Skim along the ground.

Over the moon-white lilies Is a flas.h.i.+ng and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.

As you lean against me, Moon-white, The air all about you Is slit, and p.r.i.c.ked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame Starting out of a background of great vague trees.

AMY LOWELL

THE CRICKET IN THE PATH

She pa.s.sed through the shadowy garden, so tall and so white, Her eyes on the stars and her face like an angel's upturned, And it seemed to my thought that the dusk round her head with the light Of an aureole burned.

But where she had trodden unseeing, I found on the path A cricket, so frail that her light foot had maimed it, yet strong To valiantly pipe, tiny hero, a faint aftermath Of its yesterday song.

And I whispered, ”Alas, Little Brother, why must it befall That the pa.s.sing of angels but cripples and leaves us to die?

Poor imp of the greensward, G.o.d trumpets me clear in thy call; Thou art braver than I.

”The Bright Ones of Heaven have trodden me down as they pa.s.sed; I crawl in their footsteps a trampled and impotent thing.

I know not the reason, nor question henceforth. To the last, While I live, I will sing.”

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR

<script>