Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/81

Rh

Fair Butterfly laughed, as a dewdrop she quaffed From a cherry-bloom softly unfolding: Good-bye, Busy Bee; don't be worrying me With your lectures and wearisome scolding.

I fancy He knows that the fair ruddy rose For a wheat-ear was never intended; The jewel that burns, as the humming-bird turns, His hand from the rainbow has blended.

You work all the day—'tis a honey-bee's way; The Lord made you homely and busy; What use would it be for a creature like me To be grumbling, and work myself dizzy?

And then, don't you see, you insensible bee, How our world, made of fibre and feather, Would say I was queer, stepping out of my sphere, Strong-minded and wrong altogether?

I wish you no ill. You work with a will; But I ll swing, if I like, on a thistle, Fan faint little flowers in odorous bowers, And wait for the quail's warning whistle.

I'll sit in the sun till the summer is done; But long ere the cold sobbing weather I'll pack up my clothes in the heart of a rose, And we'll perish like vagrants together."