The Life of the Bee 



in faith and mystery and hope, why 

 do your myriad virgins consent to a task 

 that no human slave has ever accepted ? 

 Another spring might be theirs, another 

 summer, were they only a little less waste- 

 ful of strength, a little less self-forgetful 

 in their ardour for toil ; but at the mag- 

 nificent moment when the flowers all cry 

 to them, they seem to be stricken with 

 the fatal ecstasy of work ; and in less 

 than five weeks they almost all perish, 

 their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled 

 and covered with wounds. 



" Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis ! " 



cries Virgil in the fourth book of the 

 Georgics, wherein he devotes himself to 

 the bees, and hands down to us the 

 charming errors of the ancients, who 

 looked on nature with eyes still dazzled 

 by the presence of imaginary gods. 



68 



