Bees in Verse
As part of our Bee Week we thought it a must to share some poetry that includes these little magical creatures. We will commence with an excerpt from On Pleasure by Kahlil Gibran.
Go to your fields and your gardens, and
you shall learn that it is the pleasure of
the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower
to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of
life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of
love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving
and the receiving of pleasure is a need and
an ecstasy.
People of Orphalese, be in your pleas-
ures like the flowers and the bees.
Kahlil Gibran
Click here if you are interested in reading the complete poem On Pleasure.
At the apiary (etude), 1979 - Marchenko Tatyana Mikhailovna (pinterest.com)
The Bee
Bee on Clover by Jani Freimann(pixels.com)
Dawn
L'Abeille (The Bee) by Pablo Picasso 1936
Sugarlift aquatint, drypoint, and scraper (artsy.net)
Bees
Bee'tween the foxgloves by Samantha Peers (scpeersartist.co.uk) REFERENCES FOR POEMS
Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry
Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!
Emily Dickinson 
The dawn that day rose
Just as the mist of the night
Subsided like a foam descending
To reveal clear water ahead
The Bees in the hive stirred about
To retrieve more honey
It was on that day that I stared into the
Mirror of luck.
Hours passed by just
As flies whizzed under a scorchy sun
The foam above the crystal water rose again
The mist of the dusk rose high above me
shattering the mirror to grits
I plunged down from a mountain
Into the depths of dreariness
It was then that I acknowledged
What I've been through
It was then that I screamed
'HEY, day! It was now that I crystallized
your power in the miror of my mind'
And thence I sat in the chair of dreariness
Waiting for the gleams of gold and silver
To shine on once more upon the mirror.
Pablo Picasso 
You voluble,
Velvety
Vehement fellows
That play on your
Flying and
Musical cellos,
All goldenly
Girdled you
Senerade clover,
Each artist in
Bass but a
Bibulous rover!
You passionate,
Powdery
Pastoral bandits,
Who gave you your
Roaming and
Rollicking mandates?
Come out of my
Foxglove; come
Out of my roses
You bees with the
Plushy and
Plausible noses!
Norman Rowland Gale 
poetryfoundation.org
scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk
poemhunter.com
buzzaboutbees.net