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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Bees of St. Simon’s

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Southern States: St. Simon’s Island, Ga.

The Bees of St. Simon’s

By John Henry Hopkins

(Excerpt)

THERE lies, far in the bosom of the seas,

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.

*****

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.

*****