Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows
Pink and the grass more thickly grows,
Where small brown bees are winging
To clamber up the stooping flowers,
We'll share the sweet and sunny hours
Made murmurous with their singing.
Dear, it requires no small address
In such a billowy floweriness
For you, so young, to sally;
Yet would you still out-stay the sun
And linger when his light was done
Along the haunted valley.
O small brown fingers, clutched to seize
The biggest blooms, don't spill the bees;
Imagine what contempt he
Would meet who ventured to arrive
Home, of an evening, at the hive
With both his pockets empty!
Moreover, if you steal their share,
The bees become too poor to spare
Their sweets nor part with any
Honey at tea-time; so for you
What were for them a cell too few
Would be a sell too many!
Or, what were worse for you and me,
They might admire the industry
So thoughtlessly paraded,
And, tired of their brown queen, maintain
That no one needed Betsey-Jane
As urgently as they did.
So would you taste in some far clime
The plunder of eternal thyme
And you would quite forget us,
Our cottage and these English trees,
When you were Queen of Honey Bees
At Hybla or Hymettus.
MRS. HELEN PARRY EDEN.
Sept. 18, 1912.