Could I but ride indefinite,
As doth the meadow-bee,
And visit only where I liked,
And no man visit me,And flirt all day with buttercups,
And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,
Or better, run awayWith no police to follow,
Or chase me if I do,|
Till I should jump peninsulas
To get away from you,—I said, but just to be a bee
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
And anchor off the bar,—
What liberty! So captives deem
Who tight in dungeons are.~Emily Dickinson
My bees, in the true spirit of this poem, were not feeling cooperative this morning, so you get, instead of a lovely close-up of a honeybee in a meadow, this picture of my little apiary instead. This was about as close as I could get without inciting rebellion. There must be some interesting weather just over the horizon–the girls are usually very sociable.
But why should they be? No one feels like it all the time. As Dickinson describes it, the temptation to seek freedom from society can be nearly overpowering. To go anywhere, do whatever, avoid annoying people, escape consequence, see the world–these are mighty inducements.
The bee’s life, as Dickinson describes it, is wildly, perfectly free. “Indefinite,” “everywhere,” “nowhere,” “liberty”–her words paint a picture of the bee’s existence as completely unfettered, dictated only by individual preference and desire, by whim and whimsy. The final stanza itself breaks free of the constraints of the four-line pattern set up at the beginning of the poem, overflowing the poet’s own boundaries.
Of course, Dickinson’s understanding of bees being what it is, this is all a lovely fiction. A bee is almost a part of a larger organism. She exists for her hive, and acts in its interests. Bees are hardly whimsical beings. They are tremendously hard workers.
Still, the image is a lovely one, and as they trace their golden flights through the sun-dappled summer air, my honeybees look like servants only of whimsy.
The Emily Project 