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!"

[1] 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.