The White Bees | Page 4

and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the
trees.
Happy Aristaeus loitered in the garden, wandered
in the orchard,
Careless and contented, indolent and free;
Lightly
took his labour, lightly took his pleasure,
till the fated moment
When across his pathway came Eurydice.
Then her eyes enkindled burning love within him;
drove him wild with longing,
For the perfect sweetness of her
flower-like face;
Eagerly he followed, while she fled before him,
over mead and mountain,
On through field and forest, in a breathless

race.
But the nymph, in flying, trod upon a serpent;
like a dream she vanished;
Pluto's chariot bore her down among the
dead;
Lonely Aristaeus, sadly home returning, found his
garden empty,
All the hives deserted, all the music fled.
Mournfully bewailing,--"ah, my honey-makers,
where have you departed?"--
Far and wide he sought them, over sea
and shore;
Foolish is the tale that says he ever found them,

brought them home in triumph,--
Joys that once escape us fly for
evermore.
Yet I dream that somewhere, clad in downy
whiteness, dwell the honey-makers,
In aerial gardens that no mortal
sees:
And at times returning, lo, they flutter round us,
gathering mystic harvest,--
So I weave the legend of the long-lost
bees.
II
THE SWARMING OF THE BEES
I
Who can tell the hiding of the white bees'
nest?
Who can trace the guiding of their swift home
flight?
Far would be his riding on a life-long quest:
Surely ere it
ended would his beard grow
white.
Never in the coming of the rose-red Spring,
Never in the passing of
the wine-red Fall,
May you hear the humming of the white bee's
wing
Murmur o'er the meadow, ere the night bells
call.
Wait till winter hardens in the cold grey sky,
Wait till leaves are
fallen and the brooks all
freeze,
Then above the gardens where the dead flowers

lie,
Swarm the merry millions of the wild white
bees.
II
Out of the high-built airy hive,
Deep in the clouds that veil the sun,

Look how the first of the swarm arrive;
Timidly venturing, one by
one,
Down through the tranquil air,
Wavering here and there,

Large, and lazy in flight,--
Caught by a lift of the breeze,
Tangled
among the naked trees,--
Dropping then, without a sound,

Feather-white, feather-light,
To their rest on the ground.
III
Thus the swarming is begun.
Count the leaders, every one
Perfect
as a perfect star
Till the slow descent is done.
Look beyond them,
see how far
Down the vistas dim and grey,
Multitudes are on the
way.
Now a sudden brightness
Dawns within the sombre day,

Over fields of whiteness;
And the sky is swiftly alive
With the
flutter and the flight
Of the shimmering bees, that pour
From the
hidden door of the hive
Till you can count no more.
IV
Now on the branches of hemlock and pine
Thickly they settle and
cluster and swing,
Bending them low; and the trellised vine
And the
dark elm-boughs are traced with a line
Of beauty wherever the white
bees cling.
Now they are hiding the wrecks of the flowers,
Softly,
softly, covering all,
Over the grave of the summer hours
Spreading
a silver pall.
Now they are building the broad roof ledge,
Into a
cornice smooth and fair,
Moulding the terrace, from edge to edge,

Into the sweep of a marble stair.
Wonderful workers, swift and dumb,


Numberless myriads, still they come,
Thronging ever faster, faster,
faster!
Where is their queen? Who is their master?
The gardens are

faded, the fields are frore,--
How will they fare in a world so bleak?

Where is the hidden honey they seek?
What is the sweetness they
toil to store
In the desolate day, where no blossoms gleam?

Forgetfulness and a dream!
V
But now the fretful wind awakes;
I hear him girding at the trees;
He
strikes the bending boughs, and shakes
The quiet clusters of the bees

To powdery drift;
He tosses them away,
He drives them like
spray;
He makes them veer and shift
Around his blustering path.

In clouds blindly whirling,
In rings madly swirling,
Full of crazy
wrath,
So furious and fast they fly
They blur the earth and blot the
sky
In wild, white mirk.
They fill the air with frozen wings
And
tiny, angry, icy stings;
They blind the eyes, and choke the breath,

They dance a maddening dance of death
Around their work,

Sweeping the cover from the hill,
Heaping the hollows deeper still,

Effacing every line and mark,
And swarming, storming in the dark

Through the long night;
Until, at dawn, the wind lies down,
Weary
of fight.
The last torn cloud, with trailing gown,
Passes the open
gates of light;
And the white bees are lost in flight.
VI
Look how the landscape glitters wide and still,
Bright with a pure surprise!
The day begins with joy, and all past ill,
Buried in white oblivion, lies
Beneath the snowdrifts under crystal
skies.
New hope, new love, new life, new cheer,
Flow in the sunrise
beam,--
The gladness of Apollo when he sees,
Upon the bosom of
the wintry year,
The honey-harvest of his wild white bees,
Forgetfulness and a dream!

III
LEGEND
Listen, my beloved, while the silver morning,
like a tranquil vision,
Fills the world around us and our hearts with

peace;
Quiet is the close of Aristaeus' legend, happy is
the ending--
Listen while I tell you how he found