A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 2 g 



" soft moths that kiss 

 The sweet lips of flowers, and harm not." 



Bryant often sang of the bee : 



"In meadows red with blossoms all summer long the bee 

 Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs," 



he says, but leaves us to conjecture the gladness of the blossom 

 as it helps the little plunderer load his saddle-bags in the fulfil- 

 ment of a divine design of which his greed is but the instrument. 



" Bees that soar for bloom, 

 High as the highest peak of Furness fells," 



sings Wordsworth again a rather long flight for an uninvited 

 guest ! allusions which occur to my mood as emphasizing a miss- 

 ing element in the poetry of flowers, at least in their association 

 with insect life. When the poet's butterfly visits the flower, the 

 insect is commonly the hero, the flower but a passive agent or 

 a pretty background in the performance. The bee seeks the 

 blossom; the blossom does not consciously await the bee, but 

 always plays second fiddle to his murmuring. They have wed- 

 ded the rose to the nightingale, but the beautiful plan of vital 

 interdependence and reciprocity unwittingly suggested in the 

 line of Hood's 



"The broom's betrothed to the bee" 



has been quite generally overlooked by a devoted class of nat- 

 ure's devotees, from whom we had a right to expect a forecast 

 of the more philosophical revelations of the scientist, for the poet 

 sees, where the scientist merely discovers. 



Browning has proven the seer of the twilight flower, and in a 

 tender allegory has truly voiced its perfume. It is the flower 

 that now sings, and though " in a gondola," how like the voice of 

 the evening primrose ! or the woodbine ! 



