Explore "The Bees and the Flies" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ A farmer of the Augustan age / Perused in Virgil's golden page, / The story of the secret won / From Proteus by Cyrene's son / How the dank sea-god sowed the swain / Means to restore his hives again / More briefly, how a slaughtered bull / Breeds honey by the bellyful.
/ The egregious rustic put to death / A bull by stopping of its breath: / Disposed the carcass in a shed / With fragrant herbs and branches spread. / And, having thus performed the charm, / Sat down to wait the promised swarm.