There is extant a beautiful tradition relative to the visit of the
Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, when she "proved him with hard
questions," in order to ascertain the greatness of his wisdom and the
acuteness of his ingenuity. She ordered before him two vases of
elegant flowers--one natural, the other artificial, but of workmanship
and colors so exquisitely beautiful, that to detect in them any
unlikeness or inferiority to the genuine ones, seemed beyond the power
of the human eye. They were placed in a lattice which opened on a
parterre of the royal palace, the appropriated residence of swarms of
bees, which were engaged in gathering their delicious food. The King
ordered the lattice to be opened, and the gathering and nestling of
the bees among the honied petals of the natural blossoms, developed at
once the eye-defying secret and the ingenuity of the monarch.
The wily Queen at the lattice placed
Twin vases, rich and rare,
Each with a cluster of blossoms graced,
Beautiful, bright and fair.
Roses, the glory of Sharon's vale--
Lilies of thousand hues,
Such as are rock'd by Judean gales
And nursed by her crystal dews,
Mingled in beauty their tints of light;--
"Which," said the royal dame,
"Are the fresh-born buds of the day and night?
And which from the artist came?"
The Tyrian dyes and the Tyrian skill,
Glow'd in the art-made flowers,--
Those that were nursed by the gurgling rill
Or petted in Flora's bowers,
No grace of fashion or shade could show
With the beauteous things to vie;
Alas! for him who the truth must know
Alone by his own keen eye.
But the lattice ope'd on a soft parterre
That blushed to the sun's warm kiss,
And Bees at their nectar banquet there
Revelled in summer bliss.
"Open the lattice," the Monarch cried--
Sweet in the melting ray
The humid blossoms the Bees descried,
And pilfered the sweets away.
Trembled in pride on their wiry stems
The flowers that the artist made,
But show'd not a cup where the honied gems
Or soft farina laid.
_Fragrance was not!_ oh! the blighted heart,
Lured in a fatal hour,
By the dazzling glow of deceptive art,
Like a Bee to the scentless flower,--
How it turns in the blight of its grief away
From the figure that _looks_ so fair,
But in Love's own blessed, unclouded ray,
Is soulless and senseless there!