Deborah: " The Honey-Bee" 277 



" The bee observe, 



She too an artist is, and laughs at man, 

 Who calls on rules the sightly hexagon 

 With truth to form, a cunning architect, 

 Who at the roof begins her golden work, 

 And builds without foundation. How she toils, 

 And still from bud to bud, from flow'r to flow'r, 

 Travails the livelong day." Hurdis. 



Among the legends of flowers there is one that tells how 

 a fair Corinthian was turned in a moment of Olympian 

 pique into a rose, and her crowding suitors into the thorns 

 that defend the beauty of the flowers. A few of the 

 more forward became insects, and among them was the 

 drone. 



But the honey-bee is not one of the number wherein 

 the ancients showed their wisdom, for bees, being wise 

 insects, do not lurk and hover in roses. These flowers 

 give an undivided industry to the production of perfumes, 

 and secrete no honey. The bee wants honey, not perfume. 

 The whole soul of the roses is in attar. As for the fragrant 

 distillations which help gods and heroes to mead, metheglin 

 and hydromel, they care nothing. Their laboratories are 

 only for scent. The parable of this the poets have missed. 

 Yet it is a little curious that such beauty should be 

 honeyless. The rose is passing fair to the eye, and kind to 

 every breeze that woos, but it has no sweetness at heart : 

 it is a barren loveliness of face and form. Perhaps as queen 

 of the garden it is becoming that she should not encourage 

 the Ixions of the hive ; and that when the bees, giddy with 

 the perfumed gold dust of the lilies, attempt her charms, 

 she should baffle them with cold, sweet, powderless petals, 

 tempting as Hybla, but " vain as painted fruits." So the 

 bees, except when on rare occasions pollen fails them, never 

 assail the roses. But the poets, not unpoetically, give those 

 flowers pre-eminence in the honey-seeker's eyes : 



