Eliza:
Policemen throng
Round Krindlesyke, as bees about a thistle!
And I’m to set the peelers on my son?
If he’d gone with Peter, they’d have tracked his hobnails ...
It snowed that night ... The snowflakes buzz like bees
About the prickling thistles in my head—
Big bumblebees ... I never felt such heat.
Ezra:
And I must sit, tied to a chair, and hearken
To an old wife, havering of bumblebees,
While my hard-earned sovereigns lie snug and warm
In the breeches’ pocket of a rascal thief—
Fifty gold sovereigns!
Eliza:
Fifty golden bees—
Golden Italian queens ... My father spent
A sight of money on Italian queens:
For he’d a way with bees. He’d handle them
With naked hands. They swarmed on his beard, and hung,
Buzzing like fury: but he never blinked—
Just wagged his head, swaying them, till they dropped,
All of a bunch, into an upturned skep....
My head’s a hive of buzzing bees—bees buzzing
In the hot, crowded darkness, dripping honey ...
Ezra:
You’re wandering, woman—maffling like a madpash.
Jim’s stolen your senses, when he took my gold.
Eliza:
Don’t talk of money now: I want to think.
Six sons, I had. My sons, you say. You’re right:
For menfolk have no children: only women
Carry them: only women are brought to bed:
And only women labour: and, when they go,
Only the mothers lose them: and all for nothing,
The coil and cumber! If I could have left one son,
Wedded, and settled down at Krindlesyke,
To do his parents credit, and carry on ...
First Peter came: it snowed the night he came—
A feeding-storm of fisselling dry snow.
I lay and watched flakes fleetering out of the dark
In the candleshine against the wet black glass,
Like moths about a lanthorn ... I lay and watched,
Till the pains were on me ... And they buzzed like bees,
The snowflakes in my head—hot, stinging bees ...
It snowed again, the night he went.... In the smother
I lost him, in a drift down Bloodysyke ...
I couldn’t follow further: the snow closed in—
Dry flakes that stung my face like swarming bees,
And blinded me ... and buzzing, till my head
Was all ahum; and I was fair betwattled ...
I’ve not set eyes ...