The White Bees

Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
The White Bees
Henry van Dyke
SONGS FOR AMERICA Sea-Gulls of Manhattan Urbs Coronata America Doors of Daring A Home Song A Noon Song An American in Europe The Ancestral Dwellings Francis Makemie National Monuments
IN PRAISE OF POETS Mother Earth Milton: Three Sonnets Wordsworth Keats Shelley Robert Browning Longfellow Thomas Bailey Aldrich Edmund Clarence Stedman
LYRICS, DRAMATIC AND PERSONAL Late Spring Nepenthe Hesper Arrival Departure The Black Birds Without Disguise Gratitude Master of Music Stars and the Soul To Julia Marlowe Pan Learns Music Undine Love in a Look My April Lady A Lover's Envy The Hermit Thrush Fire-Fly City The Gentle Traveller Sicily, December, 1908 The Window Twilight in the Alps Jeanne D'Arc Hudson's Last Voyage
Long ago Apollo called to Aristaeus, youngest of the shepherds, Saying, I will make you keeper of my bees. Golden were the hives, 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.