Moreover, if you steal their share, The bees become too poor to spare Their sweets nor part with any Honey at tea-time; so for you What were for them a cell too few Would be a sell too many!
Or, what were worse for you and me, They might admire the industry So thoughtlessly paraded, And, tired of their brown queen, maintain That no one needed Betsey-Jane As urgently as they did.
So should you taste in some far clime The plunder of eternal thyme And you would quite forget us, Our cottage and these English trees, When you were Queen of Honey Bees At Hybla or Hymettus.
AN ELEGY, FOR FATHER ANSELM, OF THE
ORDER OF REFORMED CISTERCIANS,
GUEST-MASTER AND PARISH PRIEST
“Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes”
You to whose soul a death propitious brings Its Heaven, who attain a windless bourne Of sanctity beyond all sufferings, It is not ours to mourn;
For you, to whom the earth could nothing give, Who knew no hint of our inspirèd pride, You could not very well be said to live Until the day you died.
’Tis upon us—father and kindly friend, Holy and cheerful host—the unbidden guests You welcomed and the souls you would amend, The weight of sorrow rests.
From Sarum in the mesh of her five streams, Her idle belfries and her glittering vanes, We are clomb to where the cloud-race dusks and gleams On turf of upland plains.