If now their sinking state and low affairs
Can move your pity, and provoke your cares,
Fresh burning thyme before their cells convey,
And cut their dry and husky wax away;
For often lizards seize the luscious spoils,
Or drones that riot on another's toils:
Oft broods of moths infest the hungry swarms,
And oft the furious wasp their hive alarms
With louder hums, and with unequal arms;
Or else the spider at the entrance fets
Her snares, and spins her bowels into nets.
When fickness reigns (for they as well as we
Feel all th' effects of frail mortality)
By certain marks the new disease is seen,
Their colour changes, and their looks are thin,
Their funeral rites are form'd, and ev'ry bee
With grief attends the sad folemnity;
The few diseas'd survivors hang before
Their fickly cells, and droop about the door,
Or flowly in their hives their limbs unfold,
Shrunk up with hunger, and benumb'd with cold;
In drawling hums the feeble infects grieve,
And doleful buzzes echo thro' the hive,
Like winds that softly murmur thro' the trees,
Like flames pent up, or like retiring seas.
Now lay fresh honey near their empty rooms,
In troughs of hollow reeds, whilst frying gums
Caft round a fragrant mist of spicy fumes.
Thus kindly tempt the famish'd fwarm to eat,
And gently reconcile 'em to their meat.
Mix juice of galls, and wine, that grow in time
Condens'd by fire, and thicken to a flime;
To thefe dry'd roses, thyme and centry join,
And raisins ripen'd on the Pfythian vine.
Befides there grows a flow'r in marihy ground
Its name Amellus, easy to be found;
A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves
The sprouting stalk, and shews itself in leaves ;
The flow'r itself is of a golden hue,
The leaves inclining to a darker blue;
The leaves shoot thick about the flow'r, and grow
Into a bush, and shade the turf below:
The plant in holy garlands often twines
The altars' pofts, and beautifies the shrines,
Its taste is sharp, in vales new-shorn it grows,
Where Mella's stream in watry mazes flows.
Take plenty of its roots, and boil 'em well
In wine, and heap 'em up before the cell.
But if the whole stock fail, and none survive;
To raife new people, and recruit the hive,
I'll here the great experiment declare,
That spread th' Arcadian shepherd's name fo far.
How bees from blood of flaughter'd bulls have fled,
And fwarm amidst the red corruption bred.
For where th' Egyptians yearly fee their bounds
Refresh'd with floods, and fail about their grounds,
Where Perfia borders, and the rolling Nile
Drives swiftly down the swarthy Indians foil,
"Till into seven it multiplies its stream,
And fattens Egypt with a fruitful slime:
In this last practice all their hope remains,
And long experience justifies their pains.
First then a close contracted space of ground,
With straiten'd walls and low built roof they found;
A narrow shelving light is next assign'd
To all the quarters, one to every wind;
Through these the glancing rays obliquely pierce :
Hither they lead a bull that's young and fierce,
When two-years growth of horn he proudly shows,
And shakes the comely terrors of his brows:
His nose and mouth, the avenues of breath,
They muzzle up, and beat his limbs to death.
With violence to life and stifling pain
He flings and spurns, and tries to snort in vain;
Loud heavy mows fall thick on every fide,
'Till his bruis'd bowels burst within the hide.
When dead, they leave him rotting on the ground,
With branches, thyme, and caflia, strow'd around.
All this is done when first the western breeze
Becalms the year, and smooths the troubled feas;
Before the chattering swallow builds her nest,
Or fields in spring's embroidery are drest.
Mean while the tainted juice ferments within,
And quickens as it works: And now are seen
A wondrous swarm, that o'er the carcafe crawls,
Of shapeless, rude, unfinish'd animals,
No legs at first the insect's weight sustain,
At length it moves its new-made limbs with pain;
Now strikes the air with quiv'ring wings, and tries
To lift its body up, and learns to rife;
Now bending thighs and gilded wings it wears
Full grown, and all the bee at length appears;
From every fide the fruitful carcass pours
Its swarming brood, as thick as fummer show'rs,
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When twanging strings first shoot 'em on the foes.
Thus have I fung the nature of the bee;
While Cæfar, tow'ring to divinity,
The frighted Indians with his thunder aw'd,
And claim'd their homage, and commenc'd a God;
I flourish'd all the while in arts of peace,
Retir'd and shelter'd in inglorious ease:
I who before the fongs of shepherds made,
When gay and young my rural lays I play'd,
And fet my Tityrus beneath his shade.
A SONG. For St. CECILIA'S Day at Oxford.
CECILIA, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the blest, In choirs of warbling feraphims
Known and diftinguith'd from the rest,
Attend, harmonious faint, and fee
Thy vocal fons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious faint, and hear our pray'rs;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou sing'st thy God, teach us to fing of thee: Tune ev'ry string and ev'ry tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our fong.
Let all Cecilia's praise proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name.
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raife,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From ev'ry voice the tuneful accents fly,
In foaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it finks, and dwells upon the bafe.
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