INSECTS.
My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
A Pastoral Ballad, Pt. II. W. SHENSTONE.
Here their delicious task the fervent bees
In swarming millions tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube,
Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,
And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
The Seasons: Spring. J. THOMSON.
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
Poems. E. DICKINSON.
O'er folded blooms
On swirls of musk,
The beetle booms adown the glooms
And bumps along the dusk.
The Beetle. J.W. RILEY.
I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
I'd be a Butterfly. T.H. BAYLY.
Rose suddenly a swarm of butterflies,
On wings of white and gold and azure fire;
And one said: "These are flowers that seek the skies,
Loosed by the spell of their supreme desire."
Butterflies. C.G.D. ROBERTS.
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Poetry: a Rhapsody. J. SWIFT.
I saw a flie within a beade
Of amber cleanly buried.
On a Fly buried in Amber. R. HERRICK.
Oh! that the memories which survive us here
Were half so lovely as these wings of thine!
Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine
Now thou art gone.
On Finding a Fly Crushed in a Book. C.T. TURNER.