VERSES ON THE BEE. 
13 
“ How doth the little busy bee 
Improve each shining hour, 
And gather honey all the day, 
From every opening flower. 
“ How skillfully she builds her cell ! 
How neat she spreads the wax ! 
And labors hard to store it well 
With the sweet food she makes.” 
Bryant, too, in smoothly-flowing lines, describes 
the bee as she 
“ Fills the savannas with her murmurings, 
And hides her sweets, as in the golden age, 
Within the hollow oak. I listen long 
To her domestic hum, and think I hear 
The sound of that advancing multitude 
Which soon shall fill these deserts.” 
The quaint Herbert, who loved God and Nature 
so much, thus presents her as our teacher and ex- 
ample : — 
“ Bees work for man; and yet they never bruise 
Their master's flower, hut leave it, having done, 
As fair as ever, and as fit for use ; 
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.” 
From Asia, the land of its birth, the honey-bee 
spread over Europe, and probably found its way 
