him when the beams of
the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in
comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for
the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm
descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and
tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron
nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn but
no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall
(in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape
the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering
nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out
and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far
inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest
is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound, a mere tunnel
beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the
fern grows by, red mice rustle past.

It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the
treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the
lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree
fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the
wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a
fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the
fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains
uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in
the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is
the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there
will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the
field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and
humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart
at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the
brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression
of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn
sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground, and the
livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do
in the evening.

Caught by such a cl