282 The Poets and Nature. 



phrase, and no doubt the assiduous insect, seeking the 

 " mellifluous streams, its balmy spoils," and " pleased with 

 the sweet variety of many-tempered flowers," is a wonder- 

 worker, for it blends the good with the bad into the 

 gracious " nectar of the hive." 



For this the poets perpetually admire it : 



" Hush'd at her voice, pert Folly's self is still, 

 And dulness wonders while she drops her quill 

 Like the armed bee, with art most subtly true, 

 From pois'nous vice she draws a healing dew." Pope. 



" The labouring bees, 



That in the Summer heap their winter's food, 

 Plied to their hives sweet honey from those flowers, 

 Whereout the serpent strengthens all his powers." Greene. 



" Nature, that gives the bee so feat a grace 

 To find honey of so wondrous fashion, 

 Hath taught the spider out of the same place 

 To fetch poison by strange alteration." Wyatt. 



" E'en bees, the little alms-men of Spring flowers, 

 Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers." Keats, 



Yet the legend is as old as language, and as widespread 

 as sunlight, that bees can make poison as well as honey ; 

 and sober history records instances where men, and even 

 armies, have suffered from eating rashly from combs stored 

 with dangerous juices. 



" Even as those bees of Trebizond, 

 Which from the sunniest flowers that glad 

 With their pure smiles the gardens round, 

 Draw venom first that drives men mad." Moore. 



Once when I was at Midhurst, I tasted a bottle of mead 

 which my host had found in his cellar, overlooked for many 

 years. It was my only experience of " bees' nectar," and it 

 more than satisfied all the expectations that romance had 



