Ode Xxxv.[1]

Cupid once upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee; The bee awaked--with anger wild The bee awaked, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh mother!--I am wounded through-- I die with pain--in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent on a tiny wing-- A bee it was--for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while, Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild-bee's touch, How must the heart, ah, Cupid be, The hapless heart that's stung by thee!"

Theocritus has imitated this beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl; but is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naïveté of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude begins thus:--

Upon a day, as Love lay sweetly slumbering All in his mother's lap; A gentle bee, with his loud trumpet murmuring, About him flew by hap, etc.