Deborah: " The Honey-Bee" 281 



while, earlier still, Faber has the exquisite line in which 

 he hears the bees 



" Blowing the trumpets of the eglantine." 



That he meant woodbine does not matter ; for on this point 

 he errs with Milton, and the fancy is beautiful enough 

 to justify many errors of petty fact. But "the trumpets 

 of the eglantine" are a very different matter from "a 

 trump like a clarion of brass." Both Byron and Keats 

 rank the bee's voice among the most beautiful of sounds, 

 with "the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of 

 children and their earliest words." 



In Moore's fantastic botany, such strange blossoms as 

 the Arura "just oped," saffron (better known as the crocus) 

 in full flower, the Nilia, 



" Lulling is the song 



Of Indian bees at sunset, when they throng 

 Around the fragrant Nilia, and deep 

 In its fragrant blossoms hum themselves to sleep ; " 



and the Sihu-thorn are met with tempting the hive-people. 

 If the poet had really known the East, with its legends 

 of flower and bee, or even the mango only, when the 

 love-god Camdeo takes up his bow in the Spring, and goes 

 forth, his arrows barbed with mango-blossom, his bow-string 

 a cord of bees, 



' ' He bends the luscious cane, and twists the string 

 With bees, how sweet ! but, ah ! how keen their sting." 



Sir W. Jones. 



It is only in Moore, too, that we find' the " voluptuous " 

 and the "sated" bee asleep in "the languished noon" 

 in the hearts of flowers a natural license of imagination, 

 and, curiously enough, true to nature, as bees are often 

 found drugged to sleep in the bosom of the flowers they 

 went to rifle. 



The "bee's sweet alchemy" is a sufficiently engaging 



