Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior--bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper-...-it's possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother's impending visit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Carlyle speaks of Nature with a certain unconscious pathos for the most part. She is to him a receded but ever memorable splendor,... casting still a reflected light over all his scenery. As we read his books here in New England, where there are potatoes enough, and every man can get his living peacefully and sportively as the birds and bees, and need think no more of that, it seems to us as if by the world he often meant London, at the head of the tide upon the Thames, the sorest place on the face of the earth, the very citadel of conservatism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The person or persons involved Parading slowly through the sunlit fields... Not only as though the danger did not exist But as though the birds were in on the secret.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay;... A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of bees in July Is not worth a fly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:--... "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees,... The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;<...br />Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade ...and flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »