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Title: Wasps In A Garden
Author: Charles Lamb [
More Titles by Lamb]
The wall-trees are laden with fruit;
The grape, and the plum, and the pear,
The peach, and the nect'rine, to suit
Ev'ry taste in abundance, are there.
Yet all are not welcome to taste
These kind bounties of nature; for one
From her open-spread table must haste,
To make room for a more favour'd son:
As that wasp will soon sadly perceive,
Who has feasted awhile on a plum;
And, his thirst thinking now to relieve,
For a sweet liquid draught he is come.
He peeps in the narrow-mouth'd glass,
Which depends from a branch of the tree;
He ventures to creep down,--alas!
To be drown'd in that delicate sea.
"Ah say," my dear friend, "is it right,
These glass bottles are hung upon trees:
'Midst a scene of inviting delight,
Should we find such mementoes as these?"
"From such sights," said my friend, "we may draw
A lesson, for look at that bee;
Compar'd with the wasp which you saw,
He will teach us what we ought to be.
"He in safety industriously plies
His sweet honest work all the day,
Then home with his earnings he flies;
Nor in thieving his time wastes away."--
"O hush, nor with _fables_ deceive,"
I replied; "which, though pretty, can ne'er
Make me cease for that insect to grieve,
Who in agony still does appear.
"If a _simile_ ever you need,
You are welcome to make a wasp do;
But you ne'er should mix fiction indeed
With things that are serious and true."
[The end]
Charles Lamb's poem: Wasps In A Garden
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