| |
| NATURE’S confectioner, the bee, | |
| (Whose suckets are moist alchemy, | |
| The still of his refining mold | |
| Minting the garden into gold,) | |
| Having rifled all the fields | 5 |
| Of what dainty Flora yields, | |
| Ambitious now to take exercise | |
| Of a more fragrant paradise, | |
| At my Fuscara’s sleeve arrived | |
| Where all delicious sweets are hived. | 10 |
| The airy freebooter distrains | |
| First on the violet of her veins, | |
| Whose tincture, could it be more pure, | |
| His ravenous kiss has made it bluer. | |
| Here did he sit and essence quaff | 15 |
| Till her coy pulse had beat him off; | |
| That pulse which he that feels may know | |
| Whether the world’s long lived or no. | |
| The next he preys on is her palm, | |
| That almoner of transpiring balm; | 20 |
| So soft, ’tis air but once removed; | |
| Tender as ’twere a jelly gloved. | |
| Here, while his canting drone-pipe scanned | |
| The mystic figures of her hand, | |
| He tipples palmistry and dines | 25 |
| On all her fortune-telling lines. | |
| He bathes in bliss and finds no odds | |
| Betwixt her nectar and the gods. | |
| He perches now upon her wrist, | |
| A proper hawk for such a fist, | 30 |
| Making that flesh his bill of fare | |
| Which hungry cannibals would spare; | |
| Where lilies in a lovely brown | |
| Inoculate carnation. | |
| Her argent skin with or so streamed | 35 |
| As if the milky way were creamed. | |
| From hence he to the woodbine bends | |
| That quivers at her finger’s ends, | |
| That runs division on the tree | |
| Like a thick-branching pedigree. | 40 |
| So ’tis not her the bee devours, | |
| It is a pretty maze of flowers; | |
| It is the rose that bleeds, when he | |
| Nibbles his nice phlebotomy. | |
| About her finger he doth cling | 45 |
| In the fashion of a wedding-ring, | |
| And bids his comrades of the swarm | |
| Crawl like a bracelet ’bout her arm. | |
| Thus when the hovering publican | |
| Had sucked the toll of all her span, | 50 |
| Tuning his draughts with drowsy hums | |
| As Danes carouse by kettle-drums, | |
| It was decreed, that poesie gleaned, | |
| The small familiar 1 should be weaned. | |
| At this the errant’s courage quails; | 55 |
| Yet aided by his native sails | |
| The bold Columbus still designs | |
| To find her undiscovered mines. | |
| To the Indies of her arm he flies, | |
| Fraught with east and western prize; | 60 |
| Which when he had in vain essayed, | |
| Armed like a dapper lancepesade | |
| With Spanish pike, he broached a pore | |
| And so both made and healed the sore: | |
| For as in gummy trees is found | 65 |
| A salve to issue at the wound, | |
| Of this, her breach, the like was true; | |
| Hence trickled out a balsam, too. | |
| But oh, what wasp was it that could prove | |
| Ravaillac 2 to my Queen of Love! | 70 |
| The king of bees, now jealous grown | |
| Lest her beams should melt his throne, | |
| And finding that his tribute slacks, | |
| (His burgesses and state of wax | |
| Turned to a hospital, the combs | 75 |
| Built rank and file like beadsmen’s rooms. | |
| And what they bleed but tart and sour | |
| Matched with my Danae’s golden shower, | |
| Live honey all, the envious elf | |
| Stung her ’cause sweeter than himself. | 80 |
| Sweetness and she are so allied | |
| The bee committed parricide. 3 | |
