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,—