“’Tis just a bit of scenery too sweet to cultivate, Yet there’s a wall around it, like a nobleman’s estate; “There are huckleberry bushes and a length of garden loam, And the stone walls of the foolish man wherewith to build a home.” THE HISTORY OF HONEY “The History of Honey”--by an aged mandarin, And I bought it for the pictures of the burnished bees therein. For the dainty revelations, masquerading up and down, For the odor of the sandalwood that talked of China-town. According to the mandarin, the Oriental bees Were the first to hoard their honey in the mountain cavities. In the ages of antiquity, each summer afternoon, They flew in golden convoys to the mountains of the moon. And there, in caves by cataracts, where nothing could annoy, Poured gallons in the caverns when Confucius was a boy. Many mountains bulged with honey stored before the days of Ming, From each crevice dripped the essence of a very precious thing. Imprisoned in this honey, aging as the æons wane, Are the souls of all the flowers, waiting to be born again. Every lotus, every poppy, every tulip, every rose, And those who sip the honey slip beyond all human woes. Dream again of youth’s digressions, index misty ways of joy, Turn unto the pagan pastimes of Confucius--as a boy. Doubtless there are yet secreted some divine distilleries Overflowing with the wonder worth a dozen dynasties. But the mandarin, he made no map, contented in old age To draw the clinging love scenes of the bees on every page. There he found an inspiration antedating all the Mings, And he got the ancient essence of the very sweetest things. THE HISTORY OF PAINTING A shadow and reflection quarelled once upon a time, Disputing o’er the setting for a woodland pantomime. One claimed that color dominates and waved to heaven’s blue; The other held that outline makes an angel worth the view. The tumult shook the thrushes’ nests, the fledglings joined their cries; Forth came the fauns from forest gloom with wistful enterprise. Reflection flung her florid robes o’er gneiss and dolomite; The shadow bowed to everything that stood within the light. But color lacked the candor and the certainty divine; The shadow clung forever to the flatness of a line. Spake suddenly an oracle, gray-feathered, blindly wise: “The absence of the sunlight worketh wonders in the eyes; “For light and shades are synonyms of things that stand apart Till love creates a question and a longing in each heart.” The fledglings caught the utterance, the fauns were there to see; They stayed to watch a shadow kiss a rose light recklessly. Thereafter there was artistry, the brooks began to paint; The ferns were willing models and the lilacs lost restraint; The lakes were filled with sunsets and the birth-marked butterflies On balanced wings were cruising ’cross the mirrors of the skies.