The Bird-Catcher by Martin Armstrong

Honey Harvest
    Late in March, when the days are growing longer
    Â Â Â Â And sight of early green
    Tells of the coming spring and suns grown stronger,
    Round the pale Willow-catkins there are seen
    Â Â Â Â The year’s first honey-bees
    Stealing the nectar; and bee-masters know
    This for the first sign of the honey-flow.
    Then in the dark hillsides the Cherry-trees
    Gleam white with loads of blossom where the gleams
    Of piled snow lately hung, and richer streams
    The honey. Now, if chilly April days
    Delay the Apple-blossom and the May’s
    First week comes in with sudden summer weather,
    The Apple and the Hawthorn bloom together,
    And all day long the plundering hordes go round
    And every overweighted blossom nods.
    But from that gathered essence they compound
    Honey more sweet than nectar of the gods.
    Those blossoms fall ere June, warm June that brings
    The small white Clover. Field by scented field,
    Round farms like islands in the rolling weald,
    It spreads thick-flowering or in wildness springs
    Short-stemmed upon the naked downs, to yield
    A richer store of honey than the Rose,
    The Pink, the Honeysuckle. Thence there flows
    Syrup of clearest amber, redolent
    Â Â Â Â Of every flowery scent
    That the warm wind upgathers as he goes.
    In mid-July be ready for the noise
    Of million bees in old Lime-avenues,
    As though hot noon had found a droning voice
    To ease her soul. Here for those busy crews
    Green leaves and pale-stemmed clusters of green flowers
    Build heavy-perfumed, cool, green-twilight bowers
    Whence, load by load, through the long summer days
    Â Â Â Â They fill their glassy cells
    With dark green honey, clear as chrysoprase,
    Which housewives shun; but the bee-master tells
    This brand is more delicious than all else.
    In August-time, if moors are near at hand,
    Be wise and in the evening twilight load
    Your hives upon a cart, and take the road
    By night; that, ere the early dawn shall spring
    And all the hills turn rosy with the Ling,
    Â Â Â Â Each waking hive may stand
    Established in its new-appointed land
    Without harm taken, and the earliest flights
    Set out at once to loot the heathery heights.
    That vintage of the heather yields so dense
    And glutinous a syrup that it foils
    Him who would spare the comb and drain from thence
    Â Â Â Â Its dark, full-flavoured spoils:
    For he must squeeze to wreck the beautiful
    Frail edifice. Not otherwise he sacks
    Those many-chambered palaces of wax.
    Then let a choice of every kind be made
    And, labelled, set upon your storehouse racks,—
    Of Hawthorn-honey that of almond smacks;
    The luscious Lime-tree-honey, green as jade;
    Pale Willow-honey, hived by the first rover;
    Â Â Â Â That delicate honey culled
    From Apple-blossom, that of the sunlight tastes,
    And sunlight-coloured honey of the Clover.
    Â Â Â Â Then, when the late year wastes,
    When night falls early and the noon is dulled
    Â Â Â Â And the last warm days are over,
    Unlock the store and to your table bring
    Essence of every blossom of the spring.
    And if, when wind has never ceased to blow
    All night, you wake to roofs and trees becalmed
    Â Â Â Â In level wastes of snow,
    Bring out the Lime-tree-honey, the embalmed
    Soul of a lost July, or Heather-spiced
    Brown-gleaming comb wherein sleeps crystallized
    All the hot perfume of the heathery slope.
    And, tasting and remembering, live in hope.

Spanish Vintage
    Now that the tropic August days are ended
    Come Bacchus and Silenus great of girth
    And Autumn with her kindly witchcraft blended
    Of suns and showers and the dark creative earth,
    To stain the swelling grape-skins and to muster
    The flavorous juice in every ripening cluster
    Where, over all the southern slopes extended,
    The laden vineyards wait the vintage-birth.
    So in the golden-hued September weather
    The master of the vineyard and his men
    Bearing small wicker baskets pace together
    Down the leaf-shadowed alleys,