The Bee-Boy's Song

'Dymchurch Flit', Puck of Pook's Hill.


Bees! Bees! Hark to your bees!
"Hide from your neigbours as much as you please,
But all that has happened, to us you must tell,
Or else we will give you no honey to sell!"

A maiden in her glory,
Upon her wedding-day,
Must tell her Bees the story,
Or else they'll fly away.
Fly away, die away,
Dwindle down and leave you!
But if you don't deceive your Bees,
Your Bees will not deceive you.

Marriage, birth or buryin',
News across the seas,
All you're sad or merry in,
You must tell the Bees.
Tell 'em coming in an' out,
Where the Fanners fan,
'Cause the Bees are just about
As curious as a man!

Don't you wait where the trees are,
When the lightnings play,
Nor don't you hate where Bees are,
Or else they'll pine away.
Pine away, dwine away,
Anything to leave you!
But if you never grieve your Bees,
Your Bees'll never grieve you.

Rudyard

Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. His notable works include the novels 'The Jungle Book,' 'Kim,' and the poem 'If—.' Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, making him the youngest recipient of the award.

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The Song Of The Dead

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English

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Telling The Bees

On many Yorkshire farms it was perhaps still is the custom to tell the bees when a death had taken place in the family. The hive had to be put into mourning, and when the arval, or funeral feast, was held, after the return from the grave, small portions of everything eaten or drunk had to be given to the bees in a saucer. Failure to do this meant either the death or departure of the bees.


Whisht! laatle bees, sad tidings I bear,
    Bees, bees, murmurin' low;
Cauld i' his grave ligs your maister dear,
    Bees, bees, murmurin' low.
Nea mair he'll ride to t' soond o' t' horn,
Nea mair he'll fettle his sickle for t' corn.
Nea mair he'll coom to your skep of a morn,
    Bees, bees, murmurin' low.

Muther sits cryin' i' t' ingle nook,
    Bees, bees, murmurin' low;
Parson...

Frederic William Moorman

Telling The Bees

Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;
And the barns brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-oerrun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.

Theres the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as t...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Letter XI. From The Glow-Worm To The Humble-Bee. (The Bird And Insects' Post-Office.)

(CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.)


    Excuse, Mr. Bee, this epistle, to one
    Whose time, from the earliest gleam of the sun
    Till he sinks in the west, is so busily spent,
    That I fear I intrude; - but I write with intent
    To save your whole city from pillage and ruin,
    And to warn you in time of a plot that is brewing.
    Last night, when, as usual, enjoying the hour
    When the gloaming had spread, and a trickling shower
    Was beading the grass as it silently fell,
    And day with reluctance was bidding farewell;
    When down by yon hedge, nearly opposite you,
    And your City of Honey, as proudly I threw
    The rays from my lamp in a magical round;
    I listened, alarmed upon hearing the sound
    Of human intruders approaching more near;...

Robert Bloomfield

The Bees And The Flies

"The Mother Hive", Actions and Reactions
A Farmer of the Augustan Age
Perused in Virgil's golden page
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene's son,
How the dank sea-god showed the swain
Means to restore his hives again.
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.

The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread,
And, having well performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.

Nor waited long. The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass, and the carcass swelled.
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves.
Past any dou...

Rudyard

The Bee.

Now, Ellen, stop screaming and running away,
    And come here and listen to me;
Is it true, my dear daughter, I want you to say,
    That you're foolishly scared by a bee?

The bee is as frightened as you are, my dear,
    For he can't tell the way to get out;
And as for his sting, that you never need fear,
    If you do not run crying about.

If you were to catch him, why, then, I dare say
    You'd soon feel his sharp little sting;
But if you sit still at your work or your play,
    Be sure that no harm he will bring.

So wipe off these tears and never again
    Give way to so foolish a fright;
For if you indulge it 't will cost you much pain
    And no one will want you in sight.

H. P. Nichols

Wild Bees

These children of the sun which summer brings
As pastoral minstrels in her merry train
Pipe rustic ballads upon busy wings
And glad the cotters' quiet toils again.
The white-nosed bee that bores its little hole
In mortared walls and pipes its symphonies,
And never absent couzen, black as coal,
That Indian-like bepaints its little thighs,
With white and red bedight for holiday,
Right earlily a-morn do pipe and play
And with their legs stroke slumber from their eyes.
And aye so fond they of their singing seem
That in their holes abed at close of day
They still keep piping in their honey dreams,
And larger ones that thrum on ruder pipe
Round the sweet smelling closen and rich woods
Where tawny white and red flush clover buds
Shine bonnily and bean fields blo...

John Clare