My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
_A Pastoral Ballad, Pt. II_. W. SHENSTONE.
Here their delicious task the fervent bees
In swarming millions tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube,
Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,
And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
_The Seasons: Spring_. J. THOMSON.
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
_Poems_. E. DICKINSON.
O'er folded blooms
On swirls of musk,
The beetle booms adown the glooms
And bumps along the dusk.
_The Beetle_. J.W. RILEY.
I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
_I'd be a Butterfly_. T.H. BAYLY.
Rose suddenly a swarm of butterflies,
On wings of white and gold and azure fire;
And one said: "These are flowers that seek the skies,
Loosed by the spell of their supreme desire."
_Butterflies_. C.G.D. ROBERTS.
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed _ad infinitum_.
_Poetry: a Rhapsody_. J. SWIFT.
I saw a flie within a beade
Of amber cleanly buried.
_On a Fly buried in Amber_. R. HERRICK.
Oh! that the memories which survive us here
Were half so lovely as these wings of thine!
Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine
Now thou art gone.
_On Finding a Fly Crushed in a Book_. C.T. TURNER.
When evening closes Nature's eye,
The glow-worm lights her little spark
To captivate her favorite fly
And tempt the rover through the dark.
_The Glow-worm_. J. MONTGOMERY.
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late;
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate.
_The Mower to the Glow-worm_. A. MARVEL.
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree
over the well.
_Leaves of Grass, Pt. XXXVIII_. W. WHITMAN.
What gained we, little moth? Thy ashes,
Thy one brief parting pang may show:
And withering thoughts for soul that dashes,
From deep to deep, are but a death more slow.
_Tragedy of the Night-Moth_. T. CARLYLE.
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
_Essay on Man, Epistle I_. A. POPE.
Much like a subtle spider, which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide:
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.
_Immortality of the Soul: Feeling_. SIR J. DAVIES.