The bee as conduct manual

This poem is not nature observation—it's moral instruction disguised as description. [CONTEXT: Smith published during the rise of conduct literature for children, which used animals to teach virtue.] The bee serves as a model of industry (the poem's key term), demonstrating that constant, purposeful work is not burden but identity. Smith never asks the bee to rest or questions whether its labor is chosen; the poem assumes that ceaseless activity is both natural and admirable.

Notice that Smith's bee never stops: it's out 'at early morn,' has 'ne'er an idle hour,' and its very sound is productive—it 'murmurs' an ode. The poem collapses the distinction between working and being. The bee doesn't have industry; the bee *is* industry. This is the lesson for the implied child reader: your worth is your work.

Technique: The form of busyness

Smith's rhyming couplets and tripping meter (mostly iambic tetrameter) enact the bee's restlessness. The lines move quickly, rarely pausing, and the rhyme scheme drives forward without digression—just as the bee moves from flower to flower without lingering. The poem's form matches its content so completely that it becomes almost invisible.

But notice the dew and blue in lines 11-12—the only moment where Smith pauses to describe something beautiful rather than functional. The harebell's dew 'glitters,' a moment of aesthetic appreciation. Then immediately back to work: the bee 'sips sweets' with no time for wonder. This brief exception proves the rule: even beauty must serve the bee's purpose.

Charlotte Smith

The Hive-Bee

4. The Hive-Bee.

The bee as moral subject

Smith addresses the bee directly as if it's a student or exemplar. This personification is the poem's entire argument—the bee isn't just described, it's apostrophized as proof of a virtue worth imitating.

Child of patient industry,

Little active busy Bee:

The bee as moral subject

For thou art out at early morn,

Just as op'ning flowers are born.

Thou on eager wing art flown,

Botanical specificity

Smith names actual plants (thyme, cowslips, broom, clover, harebell) rather than generic 'flowers.' This grounds the poem in observable nature and shows the bee's real habitat—not sentimental, but actual.

Where the thyme grows on the down;

Or, where the cowslips hang their heads,

In the green and grassy meads.

Or to revel 'mid the broom,

Or the clover's crimson bloom;

Or by the hedge-rows, where the dew

Glitters on the harebell blue.

Sipping sweets from ev'ry flower,

Thou hast ne'er an idle hour:

Full well thou murm'rest, busy Bee,

The 'murm'rest' problem

The bee 'murmurs' its 'Ode to Industry'—the sound of work itself becomes song. This conflates labor with art, suggesting that productivity is its own form of eloquence.

The 'murm'rest' problem

The bee 'murmurs' its 'Ode to Industry'—the sound of work itself becomes song. This conflates labor with art, suggesting that productivity is its own form of eloquence.

Thy sweet Ode to Industry.

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