278 The Poets and Nature. 



"The rose 



That was the queen of all the sunny year, 

 She, in whose perfumed halls the wild bee lingers, 

 Lightening his toil with song." 



The fancy is very beautiful, but in fact the bee, when it 

 happens to go by accident to a rose, does not linger there. 

 On the contrary, it hurries away from the sweet deceiver, 

 grumbling hugely in deep demur. 



It is much in the same spirit that the Oriental poets 

 and Moore, Byron, Shelley, and others after them represent 

 the rose and nightingale in constant association. It is true 

 that in the East, the bulbuls sing as often in the rose shrubs 

 as in any others ; but the poets' association is apart from 

 this ; it is proper to fancy that sweets go to the sweet, and 

 the more beautiful to the more beautiful. 



So, too, several poets have bees in "jessamine bowers." 

 For myself, I doubt the honey-gatherer's caring for the 

 flower. I know (from personal knowledge) of only one 

 jessamine "bower." Butterflies come there, and sleepy 

 two-winged flies, with large ox-heads and half-transparent 

 bodies. So do the moths with glowing eyes the wonder 

 of a moth's eyes ! and shoulders wrapped in tippets of fur. 

 But bees, except, I think, in blundering chance, come never. 

 I do not think their tongues can reach the honey at the 

 bottom of the jessamine tube. 



But the poets do not extend the error to their other 

 favourite flowers, such as the primrose, violet, or hyacinth, 

 for, except where one talks of the bee, "o'er sun-flowers 

 singing " (by which the heliotrope, it may be, is intended), 

 the flowers of the garden are not associated with them. 



Next only to the song of birds, the voice of the bee 

 attracts the poets. Nor indeed could it well be otherwise, 

 for who could write of flowers, or of sunshine, or of summer, 

 without mention of it, and mentioning it without admiration ? 

 The great majority of the poets accept its " drowsiness " as 



