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| THE SWARTHY bee is a buccaneer, | |
| A burly velveted rover, | |
| Who loves the booming wind in his ear | |
| As he sails the seas of clover. | |
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| A waif of the goblin pirate crew, | 5 |
| With not a soul to deplore him, | |
| He steers for the open verge of blue | |
| With the filmy world before him. | |
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| His flimsy sails abroad on the wind | |
| Are shivered with fairy thunder; | 10 |
| On a line that sings to the light of his wings | |
| He makes for the lands of wonder. | |
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| He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks, | |
| And levies on poor Sweetbrier; | |
| He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox, | 15 |
| And the Rose is his desire. | |
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| He hangs in the Willows a night and a day; | |
| He rifles the buckwheat patches; | |
| Then battens his store of pelf galore | |
| Under the tautest hatches. | 20 |
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| He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach, | |
| Inveigles Daffodilly, | |
| And then like a tramp abandons each | |
| For the gorgeous Canada Lily. | |
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| There ’s not a soul in the garden world | 25 |
| But wishes the day were shorter, | |
| When Mariner B. puts out to sea | |
| With the wind in the proper quarter. | |
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| Or, so they say! But I have my doubts; | |
| For the flowers are only human, | 30 |
| And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold | |
| Were always dear to woman. | |
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| He dares to boast, along the coast, | |
| The beauty of Highland Heather,— | |
| How he and she, with night on the sea, | 35 |
| Lay out on the hills together. | |
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| He pilfers from every port of the wind, | |
| From April to golden autumn; | |
| But the thieving ways of his mortal days | |
| Are those his mother taught him. | 40 |
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| His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed; | |
| He prospers after his kind, | |
| And follows an instinct, compass-sure, | |
| The philosophers call blind. | |
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| And that is why, when he comes to die, | 45 |
| He ’ll have an easier sentence | |
| Than some one I know who thinks just so, | |
| And then leaves room for repentance. | |
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| He never could box the compass round; | |
| He does n’t know port from starboard; | 50 |
| But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits, | |
| Where the choicest goods are harbored. | |
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| He never could see the Rule of Three, | |
| But he knows a rule of thumb | |
| Better than Euclid’s, better than yours, | 55 |
| Or the teachers’ yet to come. | |
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| He knows the smell of the hydromel | |
| As if two and two were five; | |
| And hides it away for a year and a day | |
| In his own hexagonal hive. | 60 |
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| Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone, | |
| Booms the old vagrant hummer, | |
| With only his whim to pilot him | |
| Through the splendid vast of summer. | |
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| He steers and steers on the slant of the gale, | 65 |
| Like the fiend or Vanderdecken; | |
| And there ’s never an unknown course to sail | |
| But his crazy log can reckon. | |
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| He drones along with his rough sea-song | |
| And the throat of a salty tar, | 70 |
| This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair | |
| By the light of a yellow star. | |
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| He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord, | |
| And works like a Trojan hero; | |
| Then loafs all winter upon his hoard, | 75 |
| With the mercury at zero. | |
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