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| THE BEES in the clover are making honey, and I am making my hay: | |
| The air is fresh, I seem to draw a young man’s breath to-day. | |
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| The bees and I are alone in the grass: the air is so very still | |
| I hear the dam, so loud, that shines beyond the sullen mill. | |
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| Yes, the air is so still that I hear almost the sounds I cannot hear— | 5 |
| That, when no other sound is plain, ring in my empty ear: | |
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| The chime of striking scythes, the fall of the heavy swaths they sweep— | |
| They ring about me, resting, when I waver half asleep; | |
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| So still, I am not sure if a cloud, low down, unseen there be, | |
| Or if something brings a rumor home of the cannon so far from me: | 10 |
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| Far away in Virginia, where Joseph and Grant, I know, | |
| Will tell them what I meant when first I had my mowers go! | |
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| Joseph, he is my eldest one, the only boy of my three | |
| Whose shadow can darken my door again, and lighten my heart for me. | |
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| Joseph, he is my eldest—how his scythe was striking ahead! | 15 |
| William was better at shorter heats, but Jo in the long run led. | |
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| William, he was my youngest; John, between them I somehow see, | |
| When my eyes are shut, with a little board at his head in Tennessee. | |
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| But William came home one morning early, from Gettysburg, last July, | |
| (The mowing was over already, although the only mower was I): | 20 |
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| William, my captain, came home for good to his mother; and I ’ll be bound | |
| We were proud and cried to see the flag that wrapt his coffin around; | |
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| For a company from the town came up ten miles with music and gun: | |
| It seemed his country claimed him then—as well as his mother—her son. | |
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| But Joseph is yonder with Grant to-day, a thousand miles or near, | 25 |
| And only the bees are broad at work with me in the clover here. | |
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| Was it a murmur of thunder I heard that hummed again in the air? | |
| Yet, may be, the cannon are sounding now their Onward to Richmond there. | |
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| But under the beech by the orchard, at noon, I sat an hour it would seem— | |
| It may be I slept a minute, too, or wavered into a dream. | 30 |
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| For I saw my boys, across the field, by the flashes as they went, | |
| Tramping a steady tramp as of old, with the strength in their arms unspent; | |
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| Tramping a steady tramp, they moved like soldiers that march to the beat | |
| Of music that seems, a part of themselves, to rise and fall with their feet; | |
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| Tramping a steady tramp, they came with flashes of silver that shone, | 35 |
| Every step, from their scythes that rang as if they needed the stone— | |
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| (The field is wide, and heavy with grass)—and, coming toward me, they beamed | |
| With a shine of light in their faces at once, and—surely I must have dreamed! | |
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| For I sat alone in the clover-field, the bees were working ahead. | |
| There were three in my vision—remember, old man: and what if Joseph were dead! | 40 |
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| But I hope that he and Grant (the flag above them both, to boot) | |
| Will go into Richmond together, no matter which is ahead or afoot! | |
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| Meantime, alone at the mowing here—an old man somewhat gray— | |
| I must stay at home as long as I can, making, myself, the hay. | |
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| And so another round—the quail in the orchard whistles blithe;— | 45 |
| But first I ’ll drink at the spring below, and whet again my scythe. | |
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