The Swarm 



the vulgarest to the most thoughtful, of 

 whom it has not been required that he 

 shall be active and stirring, that he shall 

 create countless beings and things, and 

 have myriad aims outside himself? And 

 will the time ever come when we shall be 

 resigned for a few hours tranquilly to 

 represent in this world an interesting 

 form of material activity ; and then, our 

 few hours over, to assume, without sur- 

 prise and without regret, that other form 

 which is the unconscious, the unknown, 

 the slumbering, and the eternal ? 



But we are forgetting the hive wherein 

 the swarming bees have begun to lose 

 patience, the hive whose black and vi- 

 brating waves are bubbling and overflow- 

 ing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent 

 sun. It is noon ; and the heat so great 

 that the assembled trees would seem al- 

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