Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Bees of St. Simon’s
By John Henry Hopkins(Excerpt)
T
An island fair:
All summer long the patient little bees
Are busy there.
The honey which they gather in their round,
Buzzing from flower to flower,
They hoard in a quaint beehive they have found
In the old church tower.
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Like Jonathan, when fainting he did roam
The hungry waste,
How was he quickened when a honeycomb
He did but taste!
So to those weary laborers on lone shores,
This humble hive supplies
The luscious droppings of its annual stores
To light their eyes.
*****