Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
"The Mother Hive"-- Actions and Reactions
A Farmer of the Augustan Age
Perused in Virgil's golden page
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene's son--
How the dank sea-god showed the swain
Means to restore his hives again.
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.
The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread,
And, having well performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.
Nor waited long. The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass--and the carcass swelled.
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves.
Past any doubt, the bull conceives!
The farmer bids men bring more hives
To house the profit that arrives;
Prepares on pan and key and. kettle,
Sweet music that shall make 'em settle;
But when to crown the work he goes,
Gods! What a stink salutes his nose!
Where are the honest toilers. Where
The. gravid mistress of their care?
A busy scene, indeed, he sees,
But not a sign or sound of bees.
Worms of the riper grave unhid
By any kindly coffin-lid,
Obscene and shameless to the light,
Seethe in insatiate appetite,
Through putrid offal, while--above
The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,
Whose offspring, supping where they supt,
Consume corruption twice corrupt.
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Written by
Emily Dickinson |
If pain for peace prepares
Lo, what "Augustan" years
Our feet await!
If springs from winter rise,
Can the Anemones
Be reckoned up?
If night stands fast -- then noon
To gird us for the sun,
What gaze!
When from a thousand skies
On our developed eyes
Noons blaze!
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Written by
Eugene Field |
Cinna, the great Venusian told
In songs that will not die
How in Augustan days of old
Your love did glorify
His life and all his being seemed
Thrilled by that rare incense
Till, grudging him the dreams he dreamed,
The gods did call you hence.
Cinna, I've looked into your eyes,
And held your hands in mine,
And seen your cheeks in sweet surprise
Blush red as Massic wine;
Now let the songs in Cinna's praise
Be chanted once again,
For, oh! alone I walk the ways
We walked together then!
Perhaps upon some star to-night,
So far away in space
I cannot see that beacon light
Nor feel its soothing grace--
Perhaps from that far-distant sphere
Her quickened vision seeks
For this poor heart of mine that here
To its lost Cinna speaks.
Then search this heart, beloved eyes,
And find it still as true
As when in all my boyhood skies
My guiding stars were you!
Cinna, you know the mystery
That is denied to men--
Mine is the lot to feel that we
Shall elsewhere love again!
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