Others, the nation's hope, the full-grown young,

Lead forth; thrice limpid honeys others pack,

And with the crystal nectar puff the cells. There are, to whom hath fallen out by lot, The sentry at the gates, and in their turn They scan the waters and the clouds of heaven; 230

Or burdens of the [workers] coming in
Receive, or, in battalion formed, the drones,
A lazy cattle, banish from the cribs :
Work glows, and scented honeys smell of
thyme.

And as when Cyclops haste the thunderbolts

And steer his distant journey through the skies;
Some against hostile drones the hive defend,
Others with sweets the waxen cells distend;
Each in his toil his destin'd office bears,
And in the little bulk a mighty soul appears."
Gay, Rural Sports, i. 83-90.

222. This use of lacrima, v. 160, is imitated by Sir Richard Blackmore in one of his beautiful passages in Creation, b. ii. :

"The fragrant trees, which grow by Indian floods, And in Arabia's aromatic woods,

Owe all their spices to the summer's heat, Their gummy tears, and odoriferous sweat." 235. The same operation is described as going on in Mammon's cave, by Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii. 7, 36: "One with great bellowes gathered filling ayre, And with forst wind the fewell did inflame; Another did the dying bronds repayre With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame, Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat: Some scumd the drosse that from the metall came; Some stird the molten owre with ladles great :" &c. Milton similarly:

"In other part stood one who, at the forge

Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted; (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale,
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot
To some cave's mouth; or whether wash'd by

stream

From ductile blocks, in bull's-hide bellows

some

Admit the breezes, and discharge them back;

Some dip the screeching bronzes in the pool: With stithies planted on him Ætna groans. They 'tween them with colossal force their

arms

240

Upheave to measure, and with griping tongs

The iron turn and turn. Not otherwise, (If we may tiny things compare with vast,) An inbred passion of possessing spurs Cecropian bees-in his own office each. The towns are to the old a charge, and combs

To wall, and fashion their Dædalian roofs. But, jaded, late at night betake them home The younger, loaded on their legs with thyme;

And on the arbute-berries all around 250 They feed, and blue-grey willows, casia too, And blushing crocus, and the gummy lime, And rust-hued martagons. With all is one The rest from work, with all is one the toil. At morning from the gates they sally forth ;

Not anywhere delay :-again, when Eve These same, from feed [recalled], at length hath warned

Forth from the champaign to withdraw, their homes

Then seek they, then their bodies they refresh ;

260

A hum arises, and they buzz around Their borders and their thresholds. Then, when now

Within their couching-chambers they themselves

Have ordered, all is stillness for the night, And their own slumber holds their wearied limbs.

Nor sooth,-rain overhanging,-from the hives

Retire they over far, or trust the sky When eastern gales are drawing on, but round

They safely water 'neath the city walls, And rambles short essay, and pebbles oft, As skiffs unsteady in the tossing wave, Their ballast raise therewith themselves they poise 271 Thro' unsubstantial clouds. Thou'lt marvel chief

And honied herbage; by themselves their king

And tiny Quirites they supply, and mould Anew their palaces and waxy realms. 280 Oft, too, in roving thro' the flinty rocks Their pinions they have chafed—yea, e'en their life

Beneath their load resigned ;-so great the love

Of flow'rs, and pride of gend'ring honey. Hence

Though these a span of narrow life befall, (For no more than a seventh summer-tide Is lengthened,) yet imperishable lasts The lineage, and stands firm through many a year

The fortune of the house, and ancestors

Of ancestors are counted. Further, too, Not thus their king do Egypt, and great Lydia, 291 And tribes of Parthians, and the Median [flood],

Hydaspes, venerate.

harmed

The king un

|

Each [being] for itself at birth derives 310
A subtile life. Moreover, to this source
All [living things] thereafter are reduced,
And at their dissolution are restored;
That neither is there room for death, but
quick

They wing their journey to the rank of star,
And mount them to the firmament on high.
If ever thou their narrow home, and,
stored

In treasure-cells, their honeys would'st unseal,

First, sprinkled with a draught of waters, rinse

Thy mouth, and in thy hand before thee stretch 320

The piercing smoke. Their heavy produce twice

They gather; twain the harvest-times; as

316. The German critic quoted by Jahn observes, that the latter clause of verse 227 of the text comes

in languidly after the former; to which Voss replies, that it is only an amplification of the preceding idea. But surely this is a weak answer; for it is at least as easy for an amplification to be languid as not. According to the view of some translators, the passage would be rendered thus:

"And take their station in the height of heaven;"

which would give a stronger sense; but it is by no

means certain that succedere will bear the interpretation thus put upon it.

340. That is: beetles by cellfuls.

[state]

Hath mixed among them with unbalanced arms;

Or moths-cursed crew; or, of Minerva loathed,

The spider in the door-way hath hung up Her flowing toils. The more have they been drained,

So the more keenly all will strain to mend A fallen people's wreck, and full will brim The combs, and weave their magazines from flowers. 350 But if, (since our mischances, too, on bees

Hath life entailed,) their bodies shall be faint

With dismal sickness, which at once shalt thou

:

Be able by no doubtful marks to learn :-
Straight in the ailing is a diff'rent hue;
A grisly meagreness the visage mars;
Then from the dwellings carry they abroad
The carcases of those that lack the light,
And lead their doleful obsequies; or they
With legs entangled at the threshold hang,
Or lag indoors within their cloistered
homes,
361

All both with hunger spiritless, and dull
With rivelled chillness: then a deeper tone
Is heard, and drawlingly they hum: as
cold

At times on forests Auster growls;

booms

Chafed ocean with recoiling waves;

storms

In prisoned furnaces the rav'ning fire :Here will I counsel thee at once to burn Galbanean scents, and honeys introduce In water-pipes of reed, yea, cheering on,

as

as

345. See Spenser's beautiful description of Aragnoll's spinning his web to catch Clarion, in Muiopotmos, 357:

"And weaving straight a net with manie a fold

About the cave, in which he lurking dwelt,
With fine small cords about it stretched wide,
So finely sponne, that scarce they could be
spide:" &c.

The process of capture is gracefully described by Dryden :

"So the false spider, when her nets are spread,

Deep ambush'd in her silent den does lie; And feels far off the trembling of her thread, Whose filmy cord should bind the struggling fly.

Then if at last she find him fast beset,

She issues forth, and runs along her loom: She joys to touch the captive in her net, And drag the little wretch in triumph home." Ann. Mir., 180, 1.

371 To their familiar food. And 'twill bestead To blend bruised taste of gall, and roses dried,

Or sodden must enriched thro' plenteous fire,

Or [sun-] dried clusters from the Psithian vine,

And thyme of Attica, and centaur-plants, Rank smelling. In the meads, too, is a flower,

For which the name Amellus swains have coined ;

To those who seek an easy plant [to find]:
For lifts it from a single matted sod 380
A giant bush; [of] golden [hue] itself,
But in the petals, which, full many a one,
Are shed around, faint twinkles purple tint
Of dusky violet. Oft with platted wreaths
Thereof the altars of the gods are trimmed;
Harsh in the mouth its flavor; this in dells
That have been pastured, do the shepherds
cull,

And fast by Mella's serpentizing streams.
Stew roots of this in spicy wine, and serve
In baskets full the viands at their gates.
But if upon a sudden all his stock
Shall any [swain] have failed, nor, whence

a race

391

waves,

Before with earliest hues the meadows flush,

Before the prating swallow hangs her nest Beneath the beams. Meanwhile acquiring heat,

Within the softened bones the juice ferments,

And, in surprising fashions to be seen, 430 Live creatures, destitute of feet at first,

And soon with pinions whizzing, swarm around,

And traverse more and more the subtile air:

Till, like a rainy-torrent, gushing forth From clouds of summer, they have burst away;

Or like the arrows from the driving chord, If e'er light Parths commence the op'ning fights.

What deity, O Muses, what-struck out This craft for our behoof? Whence took its rise

This new experience [on the part] of men?

The shepherd Aristæus, taking flight From Peneus' Tempe, when his bees were lost

442

(As [goes] the legend,) by disease alike And hunger, melancholy took his stand Hard by the holy [well-] head of the stream, At its far bound, outpouring many a plaint; And in this strain his parent he addressed: "Mother, Cyrene mother, who dost haunt The lowest [regions] of this bubbling fount, Why me from the all-glorious line of gods, (If only, whom thou sayest, is my sireThymbra's Apollo,) loathed of fates, hast borne ? 452

Or whither banished is thy love of us? Why would'st thou bid me hope for heav'n? Lo! e'en

This very credit of my mortal life, Which scarce the skilful ward of fruits and flocks

Had wrought me out, essaying every [art], With thee for mother, do I quit. Nay come,

And with thy hand thyself my fruiting groves

Uproot; bring hostile fire upon my stalls, And kill my harvests; burn my seeded crops, 461

And wield the lusty axe against my vines,
If such sore weariness of my renown
Hath seized thee." Now his mother heard
the cry

Beneath the chamber of the deepsome flood.
Around her their Milesian wools her
Nymphs

Were carding, with full hue of glassy-green Ingrained :-e'en Drymo, Xantho, too, alike

Ligæa, and Phyllodoce—their locks Out-streamed in lustre o'er their snowy necks;

Nesæe, Spio too, Thalia too,

470

hypothetically called upon his mother to do, Sir 459. What Aristæus, with something of petulance, Guyon absolutely effected for the "Bower of Bliss;" Faerie Queene, ii. 12, 83:

"But all those pleasaunt bowres, and pallace brave,
Guyon broke downe with rigour pitilesse;
Ne ought their goodly workmanship might save
Them from the tempest of his wrathfulnesse,
But that their blisse he turn'd to balefulnesse;
Their groves he feld; their gardins did deface;
Their arbers spoyle; their cabinets suppresse;
Their banket-houses burne; their buildings race;
And, of the fayrest late, now made the fowlest
place."
"O boundlesse woe,

If there be any black yet unknown griefe,
If there be any horror yet unfelt,
Unthought-of mischief in thy fiend-like power,
Dash it upon my miserable head:
Make me more wretch, more cursèd if thou canst."
Marston, Antonio and Mellida, P. 2, i. 5.

Cymodoce as well, Cydippe too,

And auburn [-tressed] Lycorias-one a maid,

The other having then Lucine's first pangs
Experienced; Clio too, and Beroe
Her sister, daughters of the Ocean both,
With gold both girdled, both with dappled
skins;

And Ephyre, and Opis, and the Asian [maid]

Deiope, and nimble Arethuse,

Her arrows laid aside at last. 'Mong whom 480

Was Clymene relating th' idle pains Of Vulcan, and th' intrigues and blissful thefts

Of Mars, and down from Chaos reck'ning o'er

The crowded loves of gods. By which her song

Enchanted, while around their spindles they

Their downy tasks spin off, his mother's

His mother, shocked in soul with strange alarm,

Cries, "Lead, haste, lead him to us; 'tis allowed

For him to touch the thresholds of the gods." At once does she enjoin the deepsome floods

500 Far-wide to part asunder, where the youth Might introduce his steps. But him around, In mountain-fashion arched, the billow stood,

And welcomed him within its bosom vast, And sent him on beneath the stream. And now,

In wonder gazing on his mother's court, And wat'ry realms, and lakes in caves enjailed,

482. Goldsmith speaks of a more moral description of furta in the Deserted Village: "The breezy covert of the warbling grove, That only sheltered thefts of harmless love." 507. "Come now, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Now let me wander through your gelid reign.

A seer, the azure Proteus, he who spans

I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds
By mortal else untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy reverence I approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient
song.

Here from the desert down the rumbling steep
First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding
Po

In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
A mighty flood to water half the east ;
And there, in gothic solitude reclin'd,
The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn."
Armstrong, Health, b. ii.
"Proteus is shepheard of the seas of yore,
And hath the charge of Neptune's mighty heard ;
An aged sire with head all frowy hore,
And sprinckled frost upon his deawy beard:

539.