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    The White Bees
    The White Bees
    The White Bees
    Ebook74 pages40 minutes

    The White Bees

    By Henry van Dyke

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    About this ebook

    "The White Bees" by Henry Van Dyke. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateDec 18, 2019
    ISBN4064066158422
    The White Bees
    Author

    Henry van Dyke

    Henry Van Dyke (1928–2011) was born in Allegan, Michigan, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where his parents were professors at Alabama State College. He served in the Army in occupied Germany, playing flute in the 427th Marching Band. There he abandoned his early ambition to become a concert pianist and began to write. In 1958, after attending the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill and living in Ann Arbor, he moved to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Henry taught creative writing part-time at Kent State University from 1969 until his retirement in 1993, and was the author of four novels, including Blood of Strawberries, a sequel to Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes.

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      Book preview

      The White Bees - Henry van Dyke

      Henry Van Dyke

      The White Bees

      Published by Good Press, 2022

      goodpress@okpublishing.info

      EAN 4064066158422

      Table of Contents

      THE WHITE BEES AND OTHER POEMS

      NEW YEAR'S EVE

      SONGS FOR AMERICA

      IN PRAISE OF POETS

      LYRICS

      THE END

      NEW YEAR'S EVE

      SONGS FOR AMERICA

      Sea-Gulls of Manhattan

      Urbs Coronata

      America

      Doors of Daring

      A Home Song

      A Noon Song

      An American in Europe

      The Ancestral Dwellings

      Francis Makemie

      National Monuments

      IN PRAISE OF POETS

      Mother Earth

      Milton: Three Sonnets

      Wordsworth

      Keats

      Shelley

      Robert Browning

      Longfellow

      Thomas Bailey Aldrich

      Edmund Clarence Stedman

      LYRICS, DRAMATIC AND PERSONAL

      Late Spring

      Nepenthe

      Hesper

      Arrival

      Departure

      The Black Birds

      Without Disguise

      Gratitude

      Master of Music

      Stars and the Soul

      To Julia Marlowe

      Pan Learns Music

      Undine

      Love in a Look

      My April Lady

      A Lover's Envy

      The Hermit Thrush

      Fire-Fly City

      The Gentle Traveller

      Sicily, December, 1908

      The Window

      Twilight in the Alps

      Jeanne D'Arc

      Hudson's Last Voyage

      THE WHITE BEES AND OTHER POEMS

      Table of Contents

      THE WHITE BEES

      I

      LEGEND

      Long ago Apollo called to Aristaeus, youngest

      of the shepherds,

      Saying, I will make you keeper of my bees.

      Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;

      golden, too, the music,

      Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.

      Happy Aristaeus loitered in the garden, wandered

      in the orchard,

      Careless and contented, indolent and free;

      Lightly took his labour, lightly took his pleasure,

      till the fated moment

      When across his pathway came Eurydice.

      Then her eyes enkindled burning love within him;

      drove him wild with longing,

      For the perfect sweetness of her flower-like face;

      Eagerly he followed, while she fled before him,

      over mead and mountain,

      On through field and forest, in a breathless

      race.

      But the nymph, in flying, trod upon a serpent;

      like a dream she vanished;

      Pluto's chariot bore her down among the dead;

      Lonely Aristaeus, sadly home returning, found his

      garden empty,

      All the hives deserted, all the music fled.

      Mournfully bewailing,—"ah, my honey-makers,

      where have you departed?"—

      Far and wide he sought them, over sea and shore;

      Foolish is the tale that says he ever found them,

      brought them home in triumph,—

      Joys that once escape us fly for evermore.

      Yet I dream that somewhere, clad in downy

      whiteness, dwell the honey-makers,

      In aerial gardens that no mortal sees:

      And at times returning, lo, they flutter round us,

      gathering mystic harvest,—

      So I weave the legend of the long-lost bees.

      II

      THE SWARMING OF THE BEES

      I

      Who can tell the hiding of the white bees'

      nest?

      Who can trace the guiding of their swift home

      flight?

      Far would be his riding on a life-long quest:

      Surely ere it ended would his beard grow

      white.

      Never in the coming of the rose-red Spring,

      Never in the passing of the wine-red Fall,

      May you hear the humming of the white bee's

      wing

      Murmur o'er the meadow, ere the night bells

      call.

      Wait till winter hardens in the cold grey sky,

      Wait till leaves are fallen and the brooks all

      freeze,

      Then above the gardens where the dead flowers

      lie,

      Swarm the merry millions of the wild white

      bees.

      II

      Out of the high-built airy hive,

      Deep in the clouds that veil the sun,

      Look how the first of the swarm

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