Empty hives, and flitting bees, and sunny morning hours; I snipp’d the blossom’d lavender, and the pinks, and the gillyflowers; No petal trembled in my hold-- I saw not the dead stretched stark and cold On the trampled turf at the shepherd’s door, In the cloak and the doublet Monmouth wore, With Monmouth’s scarf and headgear on, And the eyes, not clos’d, of my soldier son; I knew not how, ere the cocks did crow, the fight was fought in the dark, With naught for guide but the enemy’s guns, when the flint flash’d out a spark, Till, routed at first sound of fire, the cavalry broke and fled, And the hoofs struck dumb, where they spurn’d the slain, and the meadow stream ran red; I saw not the handful of horsemen spur through the dusk, and out of sight, My soldier son at the Duke’s left hand, and Grey that rode on his right. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, my honey-making bees, They left the musk, and the marigolds and the scented faint sweet peas; They gather’d in a darkening cloud, and sway’d, and rose to fly; A blackness on the summer blue, they swept across the sky. Gaunt and ghastly with gaping wounds--(my soldier son, alas!) Footsore and faint, the messenger came halting through the grass. The wind went by and shook the leaves--the mint-stalk shed its flower-- And I miss’d the murmuring round the hives, and my boding heart beat slower. His soul we cheer’d with meat and wine; With woman’s craft and balsam fine We bathed his hurts, and bound them soft, While west the wind played through the croft, And the low sun dyed the pinks blood red, And, straying near the mint-flower shed, A wild bee wantoned o’er the bed.