During those days all work is at a stand;
Nor groves, nor lawns invite the roving band.
From fragrant flowers the mal-contents abstain,
Nor seek the gardens, nor the teeming grain.

The domes, the cells, the stores, the waxen frame
From politicians no attention claim;

Their former government no more they prize,

But in their clubs the public welfare dies.
With their new principles the cells resound,
And the bold Machiavels the gates surround.
Thus when sedition, wak'd by vile intrigue,
In some great empire forms a treacherous league;
When lurking foes brood o'er their fell design,
And state reformers in their plot combine;
Though yet rebellion has not rais'd its head,
The corresponding clubs dire danger spread,
New weapons forge, their blunted swords repair,
Sharpen their poniards, and their pikes prepare.

The young princess her party to revive,

Flies wild of wing through all the bustling hive;
And to renounce at once their native rights,
The friends of revolution she invites.

If prompt they're found, and willing to obey,
She gives the word, and marshals them the way.
The Drones, in peace a dull inactive crew,

But ever prone new measures to pursue,
Rush to the gate, the emigrants excite,

And with loud clangor urge them to the flight.

Sublime upon the summit of the hive

The Princess sees her troops in crowds arrive;

The troops in crowds, devoted to her cause,
Rush to her court, and murmur their applause.
Their combination closer still to draw,

And bind the bold seceders by a law,

The chiefs around their Queen in circles shine,
And thus embodied mark their fix'd design.
Lest by delay their spirit should subside,
The queen commands the ranks to open wide;
Then rears her standard; straight the swarms obey,
And crowds of legions quite obscure the day.

Not far their march extends; they bend their course
To the next forest, and collect their force,

There for their meeting a fit station seize,
And cling suspended, clustering on the trees;
But soon irresolute, to doubt inclin❜d,

Waver, resolve, and fix, and change their mind.
Shall we, they cry, to foreign regions roam,
Or to new realms prefer our native home?
Their resolution fails; they cast their eyes
Back to their hive, nor further trust the skies.

Ere this the new-born race, an eager band,
Who left their cells to seek a foreign land,
Engag'd the elders, an experienc'd train,
To plan and organize their infant reign.
But with wise forecast, for the public good,

The household Bees cull'd from the vagrant brood

A tribe for depredation in the field,

To perch on flowers, and glean whate'er they yield, Lest age should still be forc'd to bear the toil,

Or else anticipate the winter-spoil.

The Queen whene'er she doubts her feeble powers,
Or dreads the tempests, or impending showers,
Sounds a retreat-homeward her march she bends,
There by new levies to increase her friends.
Her army follows her with fond delight,
Admitted inmates for th' ensuing night;

But when the dawn returns with saffron ray,
The old inhabitants forbid their stay.
And if no lowering clouds deform the sky,
They rise in arms, and bid the truants fly.
The truants proud, to honour still alive,
Scorn to be banish'd from their native hive.
They stand at bay; contention, strife, and rage,
And civil dudgeon the whole state engage.
But if the victory hangs in even scale,
And neither party can by force prevail,

A truce ensues; the mansions they divide,
And by that compromise their claims decide.
One party in the upper region dwells,

The rest inhabit all the lower cells.

Their separate interests there they all pursue,

No social love, no public good in view.

NOTES.

(1) THE ancients agreed in assigning a King to the Bees. Virgil adopted the established opinion, and further says, that the breed is continued without coition, the young being gathered from flowers and the leaves of trees.

Martin, the learned editor of Virgil's Pastorals and Georgics, observes that "The poet's account is by no means con"sistent with the doctrine of modern philosophers, who as66 sert, that no animal, nor even plant, is produced without a concurrence of the two sexes. It is true that the doctrine of "equivocal generation was so generally admitted by the an"cients, that it is no wonder Virgil should adopt it. We find "the same opinion advanced by Aristotle in his Fifth Book of "the History of Animals. But the modern philosophers have "been more happy in discovering the nature of these wonder"ful insects. The labouring Bees do not appear to be of either 66 sex the Drones are discovered to have the male organs of generation, and the King of the ancients is found to be a "Queen, wholly employed in the increase of the family. She "lays several thousand eggs every summer, from which is "hatched a small white worm, which in due time changes "either to a Bee, or a Drone." Martin 4th Georgic, Note 197. It may be further observed, that Virgil, according to the general opinion of antiquity, imagined that Bees were produced from the putrid bodies of cattle; but Martin says, it is not to be conceived that those insects are generated from putrefac

66

tion. The truth is, such carcasses are a proper receptacle for the young, and therefore the female parent may chuse there to lay her eggs, that the warmth of the fermenting juices may help to hatch them. Martin 4th Georgic, Note 295.

(2) Rege consumpto mæret plebs, ignavo dolore; non cibos convehens, non procedens, tristi tantum murmure glomerantur circa corpus ejus. Subtrahitur itaque diducta multitudine; alias specLib. xi. s. XI.

tantes exanimum luctum non minuunt.

(3) Fessum regem humeris sublevant, portantque.

Lib. xi. s. xvii.

(4) Martin says the Drones are the males, and after the work of generation is over, they are driven from the hive by the Amazons. Pliny says, Cessantiam inertiam notant, castigant mox, et puniunt morte. Lib. xi. 5. X.