soil,
  Set fruit-trees round, nor e’er indulge thy sloth,
  But water them, and urge their shady growth. 
     And here, perhaps, were not I giving o’er,
  And striking sail, and making to the shore,
  I’d show what art the gardener’s toils require,
  Why rosy paestum blushes twice a year;
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  What streams the verdant succory supply,
  And how the thirsty plant drinks rivers dry;
  With what a cheerful green does parsley grace,
  And writhes the bellying cucumber along the twisted grass;
  Nor would I pass the soft acanthus o’er,
  Ivy nor myrtle-trees that love the shore;
  Nor daffodils, that late from earth’s slow womb
  Unrumple their swoln buds, and show their yellow bloom. 
     For once I saw in the Tarentine vale,
  Where slow Galesus drenched the washy soil,
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  An old Corician yeoman, who had got
  A few neglected acres to his lot,
  Where neither corn nor pasture graced the field,
  Nor would the vine her purple harvest yield;
  But savoury herbs among the thorns were found,
  Vervain and poppy-flowers his garden crown’d,
  And drooping lilies whitened all the ground. 
  Blest with these riches he could empires slight,
  And when he rested from his toils at night,
  The earth unpurchased dainties would afford,
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  And his own garden furnished out his board: 
  The spring did first his opening roses blow,
  First ripening autumn bent his fruitful bough. 
  When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone,
  And freezing rivers stiffened as they run,
  He then would prune the tenderest of his trees,
  Chide the late spring, and lingering western breeze: 
  His bees first swarmed, and made his vessels foam
  With the rich squeezing of the juicy comb. 
  Here lindens and the sappy pine increased;
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  Here, when gay flowers his smiling orchard dressed,
  As many blossoms as the spring could show,
  So many dangling apples mellowed on the bough. 
  In rows his elms and knotty pear-trees bloom,
  And thorns ennobled now to bear a plum,
  And spreading plane-trees, where, supinely laid,
  He now enjoys the cool, and quaffs beneath the shade. 
  But these for want of room I must omit,
  And leave for future poets to recite. 
     Now I’ll proceed their natures to declare,
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  Which Jove himself did on the bees confer
  Because, invited by the timbrel’s sound,
  Lodged in a cave, the almighty babe they found,
  And the young god nursed kindly under-ground. 
     Of all the winged inhabitants of air,
  These only make their young the public care;
  In well-disposed societies they live,
  And laws and statutes regulate their hive;
  Nor stray like others unconfined abroad,
  But know set stations, and a fixed abode: 
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  Each provident of cold in summer flies
  Through fields and woods, to seek for