Just alighted at the foot of the old oak-tree where I am writing

Just alighted at the foot of the old oak-tree where I am writing

Just alighted at the foot of the old oak-tree where I am writing

Yonder is a hornet, just alighted at the foot of the old oak-tree where I am writing, so uncomfortably near my nose, indeed, that I can’t help wishing he had kept to his nest for another month; but the same April sunshine that lured me out of doors lured the hornet, and there it stands, all a-quiver with delight, on a budding acorn, looking every moment as if it would part amidships. “Do you think, Mrs Hornet, O thou tigress of bees, if your lovely body, with its bars of gold, had been of any other colour, that, under the peculiar conditions in which your ancestors lived, you would, ages ago, have ceased to exist; that ants, or other ‘crawling ferlies,’ who detest the colour of turmeric, would, in spite of your ugly sting, have devoured you and yours?”