Poetry Thursday - concerning the bees

The book came to me via a library sale, and is not just a pretty cover (by Timorous Beasties), it's a jolly good read about (Professor) Dave Goulson's researches on bumblebees in various places around the world. Fascinating.

Halfway through, the chapters start to be headed with snippets of poems. I hope that, gathered together, they will provide a poetic picture of this important insect.

Burly, dozing bumblebee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek.
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
     -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The music of the busy bee
Is drowsy, and it comforts me;
But, ah! 'tis quite another thing,
When that same bee concludes to sting!
     - Andrew Downing

Is this wretched demi-bee,
Half asleep upon my knee,
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee!
     - Monty Python, 1972

The cuckoo comes in April
She kills a Queen in May
She enslaves her brood
To gather up food
And in July she dies away.
     - Anon

Concerning the bees and the flowers
In the fields and the gardens and bowers,
You will note at a glance
That their ways of romance
Haven't any resemblance to ours.
     - Anon

To make a prairie it takes a clover and a bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
    - Emily Dickinson