Deborah: " The Honey -Bee" 283 



encouraged. As soon as the cork was withdrawn it was a 

 heavy August day, with the windows wide open to the 

 clover-field on one side and the pine-woods on the other 

 there floated through the house, and hung about it after- 

 wards for hours, a most wonderful fragrance of herbs and 

 flowers. 



A year later I was in the Mauritius, walking " sous les 

 filaos " in the gardens at Pampelmousse (is that the way to 

 spell it?), when a "something" of the same scent reached 

 me ; and once again, in the offices of the Grande 

 Chartreuse, in Carey Street, off the Strand, when "the 

 monks" were showing me their museum, I smelt it, and 

 said " Mead." 



" What is it like ? " Certainly not the drink that Phillips, 

 in his Cider, thus odiously describes as a gargle : 



" The Britons squeeze the work 

 Of sed'lous bees, and mixing odorous herbs, 

 Prepare balsamic cups, to wheezing lungs 

 Medicinal, and short-breath'd ancient sires." 



But what it is like I cannot say : 



"The bee shall sip the fragrant dew from flowers, 

 To give metheglin for his morning hours ; " 



but no bank of wild flowers ever yet gave me the odours 

 of metheglin. The Vikings knew it well ; so in Gray's 

 poem on the descent of Odin : 



" Mantling in the goblet, see 

 The pure bev'rage of the bee. 

 O'er it hangs the shield of gold, 

 'Tis the drink of Balder bold." 



And again, in his Death of Noel, we have it on the poet's 



word how 



' ' From the golden cup they drink 

 Nectar that the bees produce." 



But how do the bees, "collecting the various odours 



