Byways of the Bee
THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.
THAT exemplar of industry presented for our childhood’s contemplation, the honey-bee, has many little habits not specified in the rhyme setting forth its estimable qualities. One such habit has always filled me with special delight, for its blending of thrift and happy-go-lucky desultoriness. It is a fact well known to the observer of the ways of the hive that our “ busy bee ” will often make honey from any sweet substance it comes across, perhaps even neglecting the “ opening flower” to do this. An overripe and bursting grape, the pomace of cider, the careful housewife’s store of marmalade or of jelly, is sometimes as attractive to the industrious insect as is the nectar secreted by the flower. Whatever our bees do, doubtless also the bees of Hybla and Parnassus did ; at any rate, the purveyors of the Muses’ honey, to this day, often go hither and thither, sipping a drop here and a soupcon there from sweets already crystallized, but now to be changed into some new ambrosial form. And as bees more frequently do this when their hives are stored for the winter, — by way of diversion, perhaps, in the boon and lazy sunshine of autumn, — the poet’s gleanings are made in a like season of insouciance. At such times, he indulges himself in translating bits of his favorite old authors, tries his hand at parody, experiments with quaint measures and archaic diction, or turns into verse some tempting suggestion thrown out by a brother writer in prose. By and by, he will have filled, as it were, a whole compartment of his hive with snatches and fragments of song, of which the taster will be at no loss to detect the original source; but at the same time, if a fair anil generous taster, he may allow that the bee-poet has added some flavor, some sweetness, referable to his own peculiar process of crystallization ; or, if not this, at least shall the frank translucence of the latter’s borrowings disarm serious displeasure on the part of the taster. With such and no farther apology is offered the subjoined miscellaneous handful of translation, paraphrase, or parody. The boldest hazard of all shall be made first, — some attempted rendering into English of those Greek lines of wondrous beauty, forever cut into the marble of Shelley’s Adonais :
Shine now among the dead, the Hesper of their night.
CARMEN III. BOOK I.
(HORACE.)
The Brothers of Helen so Shine on thy way,
And so the great Father of Winds, with strict fetter,
Bind down every gale that would drive thee astray ;
That thou, O fair Ship, so dearly entrusted
With Virgil, mayst ride with all speed to thy goal,
And yield him up safe in his far Attic haven,
And so be preserved the one half of my soul!
And fibre of oak his heart did inclose,
Who first in frail boat essayed the wroth Ocean,
Nor yet was affrighted when Africus rose
Swift to join battle with northern-bred tempests,
Or the Hyades gloomed, or Notes held sway,—
Mighty sea-despot, unmastered, all-powerful
To raise the wild waters, or smoothly allay !
What onset of Death need he fear, who, intrepid,
Had seen the rough wake of the sea’s giant flocks,
The boiling white surge, and the Acroceraunian
Terror of steep-fronted, bolt-riven rocks ?
“THE LETTER THOU HAST WRITTEN ME.”
(HEINE.)
It does my hope no wrong !
Thou lov’st me not ? So let it be.
But ah, thy letter’s long !
A manuscript in small:
Not so one writes when one would send
Farewell for good and all!
SUGGESTED BY “A PUZZLING TALE.”
(GRIMM.)
Above the grass how they toss and sway !
Their velvet faces together they lay.
And alike they keep their queenly state,
While the sighing zephyrs upon them wait.
The spell of a wizard hath chained them there,
And they toss and sway in their despair !
One of the three, whose, love was strong,
Sundered the charm that held her long;
When she came, in the dusk, to her own sad gate
And him who had sought her early and late.
I have seen thee pass on thy sorrowing way,
As hapless I stood in the meadow gay.
And tell thee, the one whom thine heart did seek
Rose in thy pathway, a blossom weak.
And choose thine own from among the three,
Pluck me to-morrow, and I ’ll be free! ”
Back must the lady in haste be gone,
Into her flower-cell close withdrawn.
Two lilies are drenched with the dew of night,
But the third stands tearless, and straight, and bright!
He passes the two so quickly by ;
He gathers the third, with a joyful cry.
One kiss he caught from her lips so true,
And away through the morning fields they flew.
A FEBRUARY FYRE.
Envies and malice, slightes and scornes, —
Whatever, as we pass along,
Doth cling to us to doe us wrong.
All winnowed chaffs and rubbish strawe,
All dead leaves sodden by the raine ;
All ydle griefes and datings vaine;
Which throwing in the fyre, we start,
And run our ways, with easie heart. For nowe, the winter being past,
The Yeare’s new seed abroad is cast,
And the faire Garden of the minde,
New bourgeoning, shall the Gardener finde.
TO EARLIE VIOLETS.
She doth frowne
Laughters downe ;
E’en smiles offend her !
Goe and finde
Service kinde
With one will prize ye.
She will bende,
Soe, and spende
Sweet sighes upon ye !
Though ye die
’Neath her eye,
What dethe were sweeter ?
THE MUSTERING OF GRAY HAIRS.
But the hairs of thy head all are numbered and named, as a militant host. They gather invincible, crowd on thee ever, from gray growing white ;
Thou regardest thy face, snow-framed, in the pitiless visions of night,
As legion on legion they witness, in toneless yet penetrant voice:
(Drear their notation, yet hearken thou must, for thou hast not thy choice :)
Ere the cloud-prisoned flakes their way of descent out of heaven remember.”
In the treacherous nights, overswept by a cold and invisible wing.”
When the cataract draws, and rage in white wrath at the foot of the steep.”
That ever, since eld, the tides sweep under, fling up, and outpour.”
When Darkness and Dawn meet unknown in a pallor of mist and of rain.”
Where the feet of the passer in crimson imprint the legend of trouble.”
And the gray film gathers like moss where the rose-flame panted and glowed.”
Framed with white hairs ; and the numbers and names of their host thou shalt hear.
Lastly, the fence being pulled down by many laborious versifiers, the Muse easily finds herself in Gallic fields ; or, to return to our metaphor of the apiary, the beepoet, with a sip of culinary sweets, takes a careless farewell.
THE CRANBERRY TART.
(VILLANELLE.)
And her who fashioned thee at will,
O rarest work of plastic art !
How didst thou once our senses thrill!
All honor to the Cranberry Tart!
Ere we thy sweets would wanton spill,
O rarest work of plastic art!
Would then fall to, and eat his fill.
All honor to the Cranberry Tart!
But haply thou canst please us still,
O rarest work of plastic art!
Invite with Gallic name and skill,
All honor to the Cranberry Tart,
O rarest work of plastic art!