ladness in
all the world. The cricket seems to speak of more spiritual things than
those of this sphere. As to bird-song, poets differ.

"O nightingale, what doth she ail,
And is she sad or jolly?
Sure ne'er on earth was sound of mirth
So like to melancholy,"

exclaims one in compromise with all the others. Every echo is full of a
lonesome sadness. The musical baying of a distant dog by night
accentuates the depth and darkness and stillness; the crowing of cocks
from farm to farm, in their cordon of sentinelship against the invasion
of the dawn, tells the hearer how all too well the world is getting on
without him; the lowing of kine through the clear noon air comes robbed
of roughness, in its deep, mellow sonority, like the oboe and bassoon,
full of a penetrating pathos. Let Nature but interpose a sheet of water
or a bit of wood, and the merriest joy-bells that ever rang are infused
with that melancholy which is the overplus of rapture. But there is no
distance to lend that enchantment to the buzzing of a bee: it is close
about us, a universal sibilation; the air is made of it; it sings of
work, that joy and privilege,--of a home, of plenty, of a world whose
color and odor make one giddy with good cheer; it may have many varying
elements, but its constant is content.

"When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze,
Silvers the horizon wall,
And, with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And, infusing subtile heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow breezy bass."

And although this burly rover is not our little bee of the hive, but his
saucy, sonsy country-cousin, the song of the one is scarcely sweeter
than that of the other, while they blend into rarest unison. And well
may both be sweet, it is such a pleasant thing to live; there is the
hive to furnish, there is the dear nest underground; they forget
yesterday's rain, to-morrow's frost is but a dim phantasm,--the sun is
so warm to-day on their little brown backs, and here is such store of
honey. It is true, the humble-bee is much the most dazzling,--he has the
prestige of size, moreover; but the other may find some favor in his new
bronze and gold armor and his coarse velvet mantle,--there are few
creatures that can afford to labor in half such ar