THE WANDERING BEE.
"High mountains closed the vale,
Bare, rocky mountains, to all living things
Inhospitable; on whose sides no herb
Rooted, no insect fed, no bird awoke
Their echoes, save the eagle, strong of wing;
A lonely plunderer, that afar
Sought in the vales his prey.
"Thither towards those mountains Thalaba
Advanced, for well he ween'd that there had Fate
Destined the adventure's end.
Up a wide vale, winding amid their depths,
A stony vale between receding heights
Of stone, he wound his way.
A cheerless place! The solitary Bee,
Whose buzzing was the only sound of life,
Flew there on restless wing,
Seeking in vain one blossom, where to fix."
Thalaba, book vi. 12, 13.
This incident of the wandering bee, highly poetical, seems at first sight very improbable, and passes for one of the many strange creations of this wild poem. But yet it is quite true to nature, and was probably suggested to Southey, an omnivorous reader, by some out-of-the-way book of travels.
In Hurton's Voyage to Lapland, vol. ii. p. 251., published a few years since, he says that as he stood on the verge of the North Cape,—
"The only living creature that came near me was a bee, which hummed merrily by. What did the busy insect seek there? Not a blade of grass grew, and the only vegetable matter on this point was a cluster of withered moss at the very edge of the awful precipice, and it I gathered at considerable risk as a memorial of my visit."
So in Fremont's Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1842, p. 69., he speaks of standing on the crest of the snow peak, 13,570 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, and adds:
"During our morning's ascent, we had met no sign of animal life, except the small sparrow-like bird already mentioned. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible solitude, forced themselves constantly on the mind as the great features of the place. Here on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region of animated life: but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee (Bromus, the humble bee) came winging his flight from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men.
"It was a strange place, the icy rock and the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains, for a lover of warm sunshine and flowers; and we pleased ourselves with the idea that he was the first of his species to cross the mountain barrier, a solitary pioneer to foretell the advance of civilisation. I believe that a moment's thought would have made us let him continue his way unharmed, but we carried out the law of this country, where all animated nature seems at war; and seizing him immediately, put him in at least a fit place, in the leaves of a large book, among the flowers we had collected on our way."
A. B.
Philadelphia.