"Was it a dream? or did they hear
Float from those golden cells
A sound, as of some psaltery near,
Or soft and silvery bells?
A low sweet psalm, that griev'd within
In mournful memory of the sin!"
The following passage from Howell's Parley of Beasts, Lond. 1660, furnishes a similar legend of the piety of bees. Bee speaks:
"Know, Sir, that we have also a religion as well as so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and ther is a miraculous example in Cæsaries Cisterniensis, how som of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a medow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body, a swarm of bees being hard by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and there erected an altar of the purest wax for It, where It was found in that form, and untouched."—P. 144.
It is remarkable that, in the Septuagint version of Prov. vi. 8., the bee is introduced after the ant, and reference is made to τὴν ἐργασὶαν ὡς σεμνὴν ποιεῖται: ἐργας. σεμ. St. Ambrose translates it operationem venerabilem; St. Jerome, opus castum; Castalio, augustum opus; Bochart prefers opus pretiosum, aut mirabile.[[1]]
Pliny has much to say about bees. I shall give an extract or two in the Old English of Philemon Holland: