For where the Egyptians yearly see their bounds
  Refreshed with floods, and sail about their grounds,
  Where Persia borders, and the rolling Nile
  Drives swiftly down the swarthy Indian’s soil,
  Till into seven it multiplies its stream,
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  And fattens Egypt with a fruitful slime: 
  In this last practice all their hope remains,
  And long experience justifies their pains. 
     First, then, a close contracted space of ground,
  With straitened walls and low-built roof, they found;
  A narrow shelving light is next assign’d
  To all the quarters, one to every wind;
  Through these the glancing rays obliquely pierce: 
  Hither they lead a bull that’s young and fierce,
  When two years’ growth of horn he proudly shows,
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  And shakes the comely terrors of his brows: 
  His nose and mouth, the avenues of breath,
  They muzzle up, and beat his limbs to death;
  With violence to life and stifling pain
  He flings and spurns, and tries to snort in vain,
  Loud heavy blows fall thick on every side,
  Till his bruised bowels burst within the hide;
  When dead, they leave him rotting on the ground,
  With branches, thyme, and cassia, strowed around. 
  All this is done, when first the western breeze
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  Becalms the year, and smooths the troubled seas;
  Before the chattering swallow builds her nest,
  Or fields in spring’s embroidery are dress’d. 
  Meanwhile the tainted juice ferments within,
  And quickens as its works:  and now are seen
  A wondrous swarm, that o’er the carcase crawls,
  Of shapeless, rude, unfinished animals. 
  No legs at first the insect’s weight sustain,
  At length it moves its new-made limbs with pain;
  Now strikes the air with quivering wings, and tries
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  To lift its body up, and learns to rise;
  Now bending thighs and gilded wings it wears
  Full grown, and all the bee at length appears;
  From every side the fruitful carcase pours
  Its swarming brood, as thick as summer showers,
  Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
  When twanging strings first shoot them on the foes. 
     Thus have I sung the nature of the bee;
  While Caesar, towering to divinity,
  The frighted Indians with his thunder awed,
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  And claimed their homage, and commenced a god;
  I flourished all the while in arts of peace,
  Retired and sheltered in inglorious ease;
  I who before the songs of shepherds made,
  When gay and young my rural lays I play’d,
  And set my Tityrus beneath his shade.

A SONG FOR ST CECILIA’S DAY,

AT OXFORD.

I.

Cecilia, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims,
Known and distinguished from the rest,
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our prayers;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou sing’st thy God, teach us to sing of thee;
Tune every string and every tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our song.