Grand history on curious subjects, both entertaining and pleasant/Between a Bee and Butterfly

Between a Bee and Butterfly.

ONCE on a warm and sunshine day,
No matter when or where,
A foppish gaudy butterfly
Sat busking on a flow’r,

Chear’d by the solar genial ray,
He thus indulg’d his song:
Let misers hoard their useless wealth,
For gold their cares prolong;

Let other folks with anxious care,
Such as the ant and bee,
Spend all their time providing for
The days they ne’er may see.

For me among those beauteous flow’rs
Myself as fair as they,
Devoid of care I’ll spend each day,
In dancing, song, and play.

A busy bee that rode that way,
To gather liquid sweet,
With nimble wing and humming drone
The butterfly did meet.

With rustic clownish impudence,
He shov’d the bee aside,
By wing and sting he ply’d him hard,
And ruffl’d all his pride:

The powd’red beau upon the ground,
Lay flutt’ring with his wings,
Was robb'd of all his songs,
And all his pleasant things.

Base scoundrel, from the ground he cry’d
Base dun-pipe drunken robber,
You’d drink the sea and spue’t again,
For you are never sober.

You steal from every laird on earth,
To cram up thus your hive,
You spunge the fairest of our flow'rs
To keep your soul alive.

But I will be reveng’d on you,
And strip you of your all.
With brimstone candles smoke your hive
While into pit you fall.

Beau, not so fast, the bee reply’d,
For I remewber well,
In August last you was a worm
Crawling on the green kale.

And then before December next,
Will be a beau no more;
Your brimstone candles I despise,
Nor do your wrath deplore.

Thus I have seen a beggar’s son,
Grow up into a beau,
And flutter in the public streets,
With gaudy dress and show.

Thus I have seen a porter’s head
Run full against this beau,
And lay his beauship on the gronnd,
A spectacle of woe.