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? 
[21 ] 
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- 
71 
