1831
THE BEE IN THE TAR-BARREL
by William Cullen Bryant
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
THE BEE IN THE TAR BARREL
[WRITTEN IN 1831]
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I heard a bee, on a summer day,
Brisk and busy, and ripe for quarrel-
Bustling, and buzzing, and bouncing away,
In the fragrant depth of an old tar-barrel.
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Do you ask what his buzzing was all about?
Oh, he was wondrous shrewd and critical:
'Twas sport to hear him scold and flout,
And the topics he chose were all political.
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And first and foremost he buzzed of tar,
And called the heads of the government asses,
To let it be carried off so far,
And changed, at Trinidad, for molasses.
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For we got the West India trade too soon
From the British folks- he had not a doubt of it;
For himself, he'd have scorned the thing "as a boon,"
But kept at work till he cheated them out of it.
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Then plaintive and piteous his humming grew,
And I thought him complaining of indigestion;
But I listened again, and at length I knew
He had got upon the Indian question.
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The world, he declared, would all look glum,
To see us coax the Cherokee nation
From their fathers' graves, from the whites and rum,
Their pockets lined with a compensation.
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Next, tones of fury and wrath were heard-
And I started back with sudden wonder;
For the staves were shaken, the hoops were jarred,
And it seemed the barrel was filled with thunder.
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"'Twas a crime to fill the land with groans,
'Twas a deed," he said, "most foul and ugly,
To turn our poor unfortunate drones
From the public hive, where they lodged so snugly."
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And next- but I started at the sound
Of noses blown and people walking;
And I saw some thirty Nationals round,
And found I had dozed while Ketchum was talking.
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THE END
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