<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Telling the Bees<br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/><span class="smallcaps">(An old Gloucestershire superstition)</span></h1><p class="byline"> G. E. R. <br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/><span class="smallcaps">IN The Westminster Gazette</span></p><div class="stanza"><p class="line">THEY dug no grave for our soldier lad, who fought and who died out there:</p><p class="line">Bugle and drum for him were dumb, and the padre said no prayer;</p><p class="line">The passing bell gave never a peal to warn that a soul was fled,</p><p class="line">And we laid him not in the quiet spot where cluster his kin that are dead.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">But I hear a foot on the pathway, above the low hum of the hive,</p><p class="line">That at edge of dark, with the song of the lark, tells that the world is alive:</p><p class="line">The master starts on his errand, his tread is heavy and slow,</p><p class="line">Yet he cannot choose but tell the news-- the bees have a right to know.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Bound by the ties of a happier day, they are one with us now in our worst;</p><p class="line">On the very morn that my boy was born they were told the tidings the first:</p><p class="line">With what pride they will hear of the end he made, and the ordeal that he trod</p><p class="line">Of he scream of shell, and the venom of hell, and the flame of the sword of God.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Wise little heralds, tell of my boy; in your golden tabard coats</p><p class="line">Tell the bank where he slept, and the stream he leapt, where the spangled lily floats:</p><p class="line">The tree he climbed shall lift her head, and the torrent he swam shall thrill,</p><p class="line">And the tempest that bore his shouts before shall cry his message still. </p></div></body></html> · Great War