280 The Poets and Nature. 



' ' The vagrant bee that sings 

 For what he gets thereby, 

 Nor comes unless he brings 



His pocket on his thigh." Mary Howitt. 



and Shelley, addressing Night, has the line, " My sweet child 

 Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noontide bee." 



Hurdis sums up from nature the various tones of the 

 different bee voices : 



' ' Where the cherry spreads its flowery tufts, 

 Tis pleasure to survey the snowy pomp, 

 And pause in contemplation of the hum 

 Of mingled bees industrious, that invade 



And rifle in succession every flower ; 

 Some large and gifted with the voice profound 

 Of mellow bass, some with the loftier pipe 

 Of tenor soft, of small soprano some, 

 That fancy oft may deem she hears distinct, 

 The sweet coincidence of fellow-tones 

 Producing harmony's full chord divine ; " 



One or two eccentricities of descriptions are worth noting. 

 "Bagpiping" is Montgomery's epithet for the bee's hum, 

 while Mackay at least half-a-dozen times calls the bee 

 "trumpet-toned," its voice that of a "booming trumpet," 

 and speaks of the "buzzing of bees in trumpet-tones," 

 and, most ridiculous horror of all (though " buzzing " in a 

 "trumpet-tone" is hard to beat) 



' ' Sounding a trump like a martial call 

 On a clarion of brass." 



Could anything be more odious as a description of the 

 sound that Keats calls " a bee's demur," and which makes 

 the foxgloves musical ? The trumpet idea had been prettily 

 used by Mrs. Hemans as a "drowsy bugle," and Hood, 

 before her, speaks of the fairies and 



1 ' Their horns of honeysuckle blooms 

 Sounding upon the air most soothing soft, 

 Like humming bees." 



