Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/176

172 and as one whose teaching the shadow of years has not tarnished. Here his perceptions winged themselves to their goal as swiftly and as unerringly as the eager bees themselves fly to the hive with each load of nectar when every hour of the summer's day warns them that the golden harvest time is fleeting. He knew that work made the bees cheerful, and that sunny weather cheered their hearts; that discouragement did but make them work the harder, and that death itself, dreaded instinctively by every animate thing, was to them, when set against the common welfare, a thing of naught.

Half playfully, half affectionately, yet wholly respectfully withal, he continually likens the race of bees to the race of men.

 I will tell you of sights of tiny things to be wondered at, Great-hearted leaders, the customs of the whole race, Their passions, tribes, and battles,

he says in his opening paragraph. In the course of his pages, "grandsires of grandsires are numbered," "the hearts of the bees are agitated in war," "the kings turn to the foe great souls in tiny breasts," "sad funeral rites are conducted." Often in the course of the poem he refers to their homes, their dwellings, their waxed realms and rich storehouses, their palaces and cities—a picturesque phraseology which Maeterlinck repeats with great effect.

"Behold," says Virgil, giving us in one long paragraph a far from uncreditable resume of the life and labors of the bee, Behold, I will now describe the natural traits Which Jupiter himself has given to the bees as a reward For their harmonious humming. . . When they fed the king of the sky in the Dictean cave. They alone have a common offspring, a common building of the city, And spend their lives under powerful laws. They alone know their country and their settled home; Mindful of the coming winter, they endure toil in summer, And put aside for the common advantage what they have gained. Some direct their attention toward the provisions, And by agreement labor in the fields; Others within the home place the nectar of narcissus And the sticky sap from bark for the foundation of the comb, And thence draw downward the tenacious wax; Others raise to maturity the young, the hope of the race; Others ripen the honey, and fill the cells with nectar; To some has fallen by lot the guardianship at the gates. . . . The work seethes, and the sweet-smelling honey is fragrant with thyme. . . . An inborn love of harvesting urges on the Cecropian bee, Each in his own function. . . . There is one time of toil, one rest from work, for all. In the morning they rush out from the gates; there is no delay; Again when evening has warned them to cease From feeding in the fields, they seek their dwellings,