Another jotting, another perfect day: forenoon, from 7 to 9, two hours envelop'd in sound of bumble-bees and bird-music. Down in the apple-trees and in a neighboring cedar were three or four russet-back'd thrushes, each singing his best, and roulading in ways I never heard surpass'd. Two hours I abandon myself to hearing them, and indolently absorbing the scene. Almost every bird I notice has a special time in the year--sometimes limited to a few days--when it sings its best; and now is the period of these russet-backs. Meanwhile, up and down the lane, the darting, droning, musical bumble-bees. A great swarm again for my entourage as I return home, moving along with me as before.
As I write this, two or three weeks later, I am sitting near the brook under a tulip tree, 70 feet high, thick with the fresh verdure of its young maturity--a beautiful object--every branch, every leaf perfect. From top to bottom, seeking the sweet juice in the blossoms, it swarms with myriads of these wild bees, whose loud and steady humming makes an undertone to the whole, and to my mood and the hour. All of which I will bring to a close by extracting the following verses from Henry A. Beers's little volume:
As I lay yonder in tall grass A drunken bumble-bee went past
Delirious with honey toddy. The golden sash about his body Scarce kept it in his swollen belly Distent with honeysuckle jelly. Rose liquor and the sweet-pea wine Had fill' d his soul with song divine; Deep had he drunk the warm night through, His hairy thighs were wet with dew. Full many an antic he had play'd While the world went round through sleep and shade. Oft had he lit with thirsty lip Some flower-cup's nectar'd sweets to sip, When on smooth petals he would slip, Or over tangled stamens trip, And headlong in the pollen roll'd, Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold; Or else his heavy feet would stumble Against some bud, and down he'd tumble Amongst the grass; there lie and grumble In low, soft bass--poor maudlin bumble!
As I journey'd to-day in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through the country, nothing pleas'd me more, in their homely beauty and novelty (I had either never seen the little things to such advantage, or had never noticed them before) than that peculiar fruit, with its profuse clear-yellow dangles of inch-long silk or yarn, in boundless profusion spotting the dark green cedar bushes--contrasting well with their bronze tufts--the flossy shreds covering the knobs all over, like a shock of wild hair on elfin pates. On my ramble afterward down by the creek I pluck'd one from its bush, and shall keep it. These cedar-apples last only a little while however, and soon crumble and fade.