The Island Bee, from "Picture Poesies"

Pinwell shows a woman standing in a garden, reassuring a small girl who reacts with fear to insects hovering around a flower. The wood engraving first appeared in "Wayside Posies:Original Poems of the Country Life," edited by Robert Williams Buchanan, illustrated by G. J. Pinwell, J. W. North, and Frederick Walker, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, and published by Routledge as a Fine Art gift book. In 1874, the publisher reissued the print in "Picture Poesies." The related poem, whose author is not identified, describes a bee that travels to the Scottish mainland from one of the Isles.

The Island Bee
A Rhyme

Far from his island bowers
Daily he wanders,
Kissing the virgin flowers
Of the mainlanders.

Far o'er the lonely wild
White the stream foameth;
There this undaunted Gael
Fearlessly roameth.

Over the mighty ben
Into the corry,
Piping he sweeps agen
On his sweet foray.

Where the sweet homestead peers,
Singing he cometh;
Round the farm urchin's ears
Terribly hummeth;

Brushing with pinion sweet,
Hydromel-laden,
The dew-drops around the feet,
Of the farm maiden.

Then as o'er eave and vane
Hovers the swallow,
And o'er the western main
Stoops red Apollo,

Homeward, by ocean's brink,
Briskly he urges,
Where the blind cockles blink
Under the surges.

Over the strait he flies
To the green islands,
Bearing about his thighs
Spoils from the nigh lands.

All the drones hum with glee,
"Hail to the Raider,
Claymored and tartan'd Bee,
Matchless invader!

"Bravely gone, safely come,
Chieftain unconquered!
Give him a Highland hum!
Give him a tankard!"

Then to the hive they flee,
Red, black and yellow,
Where he gets three times three—
Jolly good fellow!