As bees afield in summer clear
Beset the flowerets far and near,
And round the fair white lilies pour,
The deep hum sounds the champaign o’er.”
In such lines, too, Mr. Morris, judging from his own poetry, should be at his best; and here again it is hard to choose between him and his predecessor:
“But down amid a hollow dale, meanwhile, Æneas sees
A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,
And Lethe’s stream that all along that quiet place doth wend;
O’er which there hovered countless folks and peoples without end.
And as when bees, amid the fields in summer-tide the bright,