The Garden’s Hum: Bees in Verse from Lawrence to Wagoner

July 6, 2020

Today’s poems hum with the golden sound of summer—the steady, sacred buzz of bees.

Few creatures capture the soul of July more completely. They are the tireless keepers of bloom and sweetness, choreographers of clover and cosmos alike.

Their song threads through every garden, a low, constant hymn of life at work.

Garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence gave us one of the most beloved truths of horticultural faith:

The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.
— Elizabeth Lawrence, garden writer

Indeed, what gardener can imagine a summer afternoon without that voice?

The hum carries assurance: that the invisible order of things still hums along, that flowers are being visited, seeds are being set, and honey is quietly being made.

James Russell Lowell heard that same harmony in the lazy drift of daylight and scent:

The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy Bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.
— James Russell Lowell, American Romantic poet

The image of the “drowsy Bee” is perfection—the very poetry of contentment. That slow, bumbling assurance of July, when time thickens like honey and the world hums itself to rest.

John Bannister Tabb takes a more mischievous turn, imagining the Bee as a sort of cheerful tax collector—a buzzed publican in pursuit of nectar dues:

"And pray, who are you?"
Said the Violet blue
To the Bee, with surprise,
At his wonderful size,
In her eyeglass of dew.
"I, madam," quoth he,
"Am a publican Bee,
Collecting the tax
Of honey and wax.
Have you nothing for me?"
— John Bannister Tabb, American poet and priest, The Violet and the Bee

Tabb’s playful dialogue captures both the dignity and humor of bees—those unassuming officials overseeing the commerce of summer. Every garden flower pays its share; none complain.

Emily Dickinson, always elliptical and profound, turns from the bee’s presence to its absence—her July an echo of questions and answers between the living and the fading seasons:

Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—
― Emily Dickinson, American poet

The poet’s July seems to meditate on transience—the way each season asks the next to account for what it carried forward or left behind. Yet even in her questioning, one feels the echo of wings somewhere in that silence.

And then comes David Wagoner, whose modern poem feels like an evening epilogue to the day’s hum—a symphony of movement, life, and quiet mystery:

All day the bees have come to the garden.
They hover, swivel in arcs and, whirling, light
On stamens heavy with pollen, probe and revel
Inside the yellow and red starbursts of dahlias
Or cling to lobelia's blue-white mouths
Or climb the speckled trumpets of foxgloves.
My restless eyes follow their restlessness
As they plunge bodily headfirst into treasure,
Gold-fevered among these horns of plenty.
They circle me, a flowerless patch
With nothing to offer in the way of sweetness
Or light against the first omens of evening.
Some, even now, are dying at the end
Of their few weeks, some being born in the dark,
Some simply waiting for life, but some are dancing
Deep in their hives, telling the hungry
The sun will be that way, the garden this far:
This is the way to the garden. They hum at my ear.
And I wake up, startled, seeing the early
Stars beginning to bud in constellations.
The bees have gathered somewhere like petals closing
For the coming of the cold. The silhouette
Of a sphinx moth swerves to drink at a flowerhead.
The night-blooming moon opens its pale corolla.
— David Wagoner, American poet, Falling Asleep In The Garden

Wagoner’s bees are more than mere insects—they are the very pulse of the garden itself. Their flight is purpose woven into music, their labor a living map of warmth and life. As the stars rise, the bees retreat, and we, too, feel the gathering hush after the day’s sweetness.

So on this bright July day, pause near a lavender hedge or the edge of a sunflower bed, and listen closely.

That hum you hear is the garden’s beating heart—a melody written in the oldest of tongues, sung by its smallest choir.