The Fable of the Bees

THE MORAL

THE MORAL

Then leave complaints: fools only strive

To make a great an honest hive.

T’ enjoy the world’s conveniences,

Be fam’d in war, yet live in ease,

Without great vices, is a vain

Eutopia seated in the brain.

Fraud, luxury, and pride must live,

While we the benefits receive:

Hunger’s a dreadful plague, no doubt,

Yet who digests or thrives without?

Do we not owe the growth of wine

To the dry shabby crooked vine?

Which, while its shoots neglected stood,

Chok’d other plants, and ran to wood;

But blest us with its noble fruit,

As soon as it was ty’d and cut:

So vice is beneficial found,

When it’s by justice lopp’d and bound;

Nay, where the people would be great, }

As necessary to the state,

As hunger is to make ’em eat.

Bare virtue can’t make nations live

In splendor; they, that would revive

A golden age, must be as free,

For acorns as for honesty.