This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed, Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love, Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each, Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth, And their old court and waxen realm repair.
Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones Their wings they fray, and 'neath the burden yield Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers, So glorious deem they honey's proud acquist.
Therefore, though each a life of narrow span, Ne'er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls, Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still Perennial stands the fortune of their line, From grandsire unto grandsire backward told.
Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia's hordes, Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed, One will inspires the million: is he dead, Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain Their own comb's waxen trellis. He is the lord Of all their labour; him with awful eye They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround, In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high, Or with their bodies shield him in the fight, And seek through showering wounds a glorious death.
Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide, Some say that unto bees a share is given Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all-Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven-From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind, Draw each at birth the fine essential flame;Yea, and that all things hence to Him return, Brought back by dissolution, nor can death Find place: but, each into his starry rank, Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven.
If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal, And broach the treasures of the honey-house, With draught of water first toment thy lips, And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke.
Twice is the teeming produce gathered in, Twofold their time of harvest year by year, Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts Her comely forehead for the earth to see, With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams, Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish, And dips from heaven into the wintry wave.
Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives Behind them in the wound. But if you dread Too rigorous a winter, and would fain Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts And broken estate to pity move thy soul, Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme, Or cut the empty wax away? for oft Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen, And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed, And he that sits at others' board to feast, The do-naught drone; or 'gainst the unequal foe Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth's fell tribe;Or spider, victim of Minerva's spite, Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net.
The more impoverished they, the keenlier all To mend the fallen fortunes of their race Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier, And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers.
Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring Our human chances, if in dire disease Their bodies' strength should languish- which anon By no uncertain tokens may be told-Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars Their visage; then from out the cells they bear Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp;Or foot to foot about the porch they hang, Or within closed doors loiter, listless all From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold.
Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum, As when the chill South through the forests sighs, As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls.
Then do I bid burn scented galbanum, And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled, Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall, And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme.
There is a meadow-flower by country folk Hight star-wort; 'tis a plant not far to seek;For from one sod an ample growth it rears, Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves, Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom.
With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked Heaven's altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue;Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks By Mella's winding waters gather it.
The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine, Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food.
But if one's whole stock fail him at a stroke, Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew, 'Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne Bees from corruption. I will trace me back To its prime source the story's tangled thread, And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk, Canopus, city of Pellaean fame, Dwell by the Nile's lagoon-like overflow, And high o'er furrows they have called their own Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by, The quivered Persian presses, and that flood Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down, Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green, That whole domain its welfare's hope secure Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen A strait recess, cramped closer to this end, Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop 'Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto From the four winds four slanting window-slits.
