ART OF THE HIVE

William Beespeare- To feed, or not to feed (from Beelet 3/1)

To feed or not to feed: that is the question:
Whether “its nobler in the mind to suffer
The pains and aches of starvation,
Or to take up stingers against the keeper,
And by doing so be feed? To eat: to hunger
No more; and by a hunger to say we end
The tummy-ache and the thousands of natural deaths
That hive is heir to, “tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To eat, to pigout;
To pigout: perchance to vomit; ay, there’s the rub:
For in that pigout of eating what indigestion may come.
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause; there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long a hunger:
For who would bear the empty honey combs of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud bee’s contumely,
The pangs of despised fulfillment, the law’s delay,
The insolence of the beekeeper
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No bee returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to flowers that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my stings remember'd.