While he survives, in concord and content
The commons live, by no divisions rent:
But the great inonarch's death dissolves the go-
All goes to ruin; they themselves contrive
To rob the honey, and subvert the hive.
The king presides, his subjects' toil surveys,
The servile route their careful Cæsar praise:
Him they extol; they worship him alone;
They crowd his levees, and support his throne:
They raise him on their shoulders with a shout;
And, when their sov'reign's quarrel calls them out,
His foes to mortal combat they defy,
And think it honour at his feet to die.
Induc'd by such examples some have taught
That bees have portion of etherial thought—
Endu'd with particles of heavenly fires;
For God the whole created mass inspires.
Through heav'n, and earth, and ocean's depth, he throws His influence round, and kindles as he
Hence flocks, and herds, and men, and beasts, and fowls,
With breath are quicken'd, and attract their souls;
Hence take the forms his prescience did ordain,
And into him at length resolve again.
No room is left for death: they mount the sky,
And to their own congenial planets fly.
Now, when thou hast decreed to seize their stores,
And by prerogative to break their doors,
With sprinkled water first the city choke,
And then pursue the citizens with smoke.
Two honey-harvests fall in ev'ry year:
First, when the pleasing Pleiades appear,
And, springing upward, spurn the briny seas:
Again, when their affrighted choir surveys
The wat'ry Scorpion mend his pace behind,
With a black train of storms, and winter wind,
They plunge into the deep and safe protection find.
Prone to revenge, the bees, a wrathful race,
When once provok'd, assault the aggressor's face, 345
And through the purple veins a passage find;
There fix their stings, and leave their souls behind.
But, if a pinching winter thou foresee,
And wouldst preserve thy famish'd family;
With fragrant thyme the city fumigate,
And break the waxen walls to save the state.
For lurking lizards ofter. lodge, by stealth;
Within the suburbs, and purloin their wealth;
And worms, that shun the light, a dark retreat
Have found in combs, and undermin'd the seat;
Or lazy drones, without their share of pain,
In winter-quarters free, devour the gain;
Or wasps infest the camp with loud alarms,
And mix in battle with unequal arms;
Or secret moths are there in silence fed;
Or spiders in the vault their snary webs have spread.
The more oppress'd by foes, or fainine-pin'd,
The more increase thy care to save the sinking kind:
With greens and flow'rs recruit their empty hives,
And seek fresh forage to sustain their lives.
But, since they share with man one common fate,
In health and sickness, and in turns of state,-
Observe the symptoms. When they fall away,
And languish with insensible decay,
They change their hue; with haggard eyes they stare;
Lean are their looks, and shagged is their hair:
And crowds of dead, that never must return
To their lov'd hives, in decent pomp are borne:
Their friends attend the hearse; the next relations
The sick, for air, before the portal gasp,
Their feeble legs within each other clasp,
Or idle in their empty hives remain,
Benumb'd with cold, and listless of their gain.
Soft whispers then, and broken sounds, are heard,
As when the woods by gentle winds are stirr'd;
Such stifled noise as the close furnace hides,
Or dying murmurs of departing tides.
This when thou seest galbanean odours use,
And honey in the sickly hive infuse.
Through reeden pipes convey the golden flood,
T' invite the people to their wonted food.
Mix it with thicken'd juice of sodden wines,
And raisins from the grapes of Psythian vines:
To these add pounded galls, and roses dry,
And, with Cecropian thyme, strong-scented centaury.390 A flow'r there is, that grows in meadow-ground,
Amellus call'd, and easy to be found;
For, from one root, the rising stem bestows
A wood of leaves, and vi'let purple boughs:
The flow'r itself is glorious to behold,
And shines on altars like refulgent gold--
Sharp to the taste-by shepherds near the stream
Of Mella found; and thence they gave the name.
Boil this restoring root in gen'rous wine,
And set beside the door, the sickly stock to dine.
But, if the lab'ring kind be wholly lost,
And not to be retriev'd with care or cost;
'Tis time to touch the precepts of an art
Th' Arcadian master did of old impart;
And how he stock'd his empty hives again,
Renew'd with putrid gore of oxen slain.
An ancient legend I prepare to sing,
And upward follow Fame's immortal spring;
For, where with sevenfold horns mysterious Nile
Surrounds the skirts of Egypt's fruitful isle,
And where in pomp the sunburnt people ride,
On painted barges o'er the teeming tide,
Which, pouring down from Ethiopian lands,
Makes green the soil with slime, and black prolific
That length of region, and large tract of ground, 415 In this one art a sure relief have found.
First, in a place, by nature close, they build
A narrow flooring, gutter'd, wall'd, and til'd.
In this, four windows are contriv'd, that strike
To the four winds oppos'd, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose head
Now first with burnish'd horns begins to spread:
They stop his nostrils while he strives in vain
To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain
Knock'd down, he dies: his bowels bruis'd within, 425
Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.
Extended thus, in this obscene abode
They leave the beast; but first sweet flow'rs are strow'd
Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing cassia just renew'd in prime.
This must be done ere spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play:
Ere painted meads produce their flow'ry crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and through the bones ferment.
Then (wond'rous to behold) new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;
Til shooting out with legs, and imp'd with wings,
The grubs proceed to bees with pointed stings,
And, more and more affecting air, they try
Their tender pinions, and begin to fly:
At length, like summer storms from spreading clouds,
That burst at once, and pour impetuous floods—
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When from afar they gall embattled foes-
With such a tempest through the skies they steer;
And such a form the winged squadrons bear.
What god, O Muse! this useful science taught?
Or by what man's experience was it brought?
Sad Aristæus from fair Tempe fled-
His bees with famine or diseases dead :
On Peneus' banks he stood, and near his holy head;
And, while his falling tears the stream supply'd,
Thus, mourning to his mother goddess cried:
"Mother Cyrene! mother, whose abode
Is in the depth of this immortal flood!
What boots it, that from Phœbus' loins I spring
The third, by him and thee, from heav'n's high king?
O! where is all thy boasted pity gone,
And promise of the skies to thy deluded son?
Why didst thou me, unhappy me, create,
Odious to gods, and borne to bitter fate?
Whom scarce my sheep, and scarce my painful plough,
The needful aids of human life allow:
So wretched is thy son, so hard a mother thou!
Proceed, inhuman parent, in thy scorn;
Root up my trees; with blights destroy my corn;
My vineyards ruin, and my sheepfolds burn.
Let loose thy rage, let all thy spite be shown;
Since thus thy hate pursues the praises of thy son."
But, from her mossy bow'r below the ground,
His careful mother heard the plaintive sound-
Encompass'd with her sea-green sisters round.
One common work they ply'd; their distaffs full
With carded locks of blue Milesian wool.
Spio, with Drymo brown, and Xantho fair,
Add sweet Phyllodoce with long dishevell'd hair;
Cydippe with Lycorias, one a maid,
And one that once had call'd Lucina's aid
Clio and Beroe, from one father both;
Opis the meek, and Deiopeia proud;
Both girt with gold, and clad in particolour'd cloth;
Nisæa lofty, with Ligea loud;
Thalia joyous, Ephyre the sad,
And Arethusa, once Diana's maid,
But now (her quiver left) to love betray'd.
To these Clymene the sweet theft declares
Of Mars; and Vulcan's unavailing cares;
And all the rapes of gods, and ev'ry love,
From ancient Chaos down to youthful Jove:
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