The Spider Versus The Honey Bee

I just had to scoop this image from Roger Bourland to go with this entry. (FWIW the spider pictured is a crab spider, not a black widow)

Seems Spiders and Bee’s have been duking it out for centuries!

The Battle of the Books
By Jonathan Swift
1704

Full text (Olde English)

Text/audio downloads

An argument between a Spider and a Honeybee erupts when a bookish spider’s web is torn by a wayward bee who flew in through an open window.

In plain modern English:

The Spider

Not that I should stoop so low as to compare myself to such a tramp, a son of a bum with no house or home, no money, no hope of money, with nothing to your no good name but a pair of wings and a monotonous voice.

You’re a freeloader! You steal and plunder the works of nature for the fun of it. Just another example of your worthlessness; You’ll rob from a poor thistle as gladly as you’ll take from the fat violet.

I on the other hand, am domesticated with inherent value. Look around this castle I built with my superior knowledge of mathematics. I built this all with my own hands from material produced from my own loins! I, am obliged to no one.

The Bee

Well thank you for conceding I came by my wings and voice honestly! I guess then it seems I’m obliged only to please heaven for my flights and music.  Lady Luck too for she would never have given me such gifts without first designing them for noble ends.

Sure I visit all the blossoms of open field’s and closed garden’s, but whatever good I collect from them never harms their beauty, their smell or taste.

As for you and your skill in architecture I have little to say except that whatever methods or labor you put into it, its plain to see as we can both can attest, the materials have been torn! I hope in the future you will consider durability and strength as well as method and art when constructing your “castle”.

You boast of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing, and spinning out all by yourself. If we may judge the proof of the pudding that issues from your hiney I’d say you possess a great deal of dirt and poison in your heart.

I by no means intend to minimize your stock of either, I highly doubt you are obliged to anyone for increasing both. Your inherent portion of dirt didn’t come from collecting, or by gifts of venom given by other insects.

So with that said the question remains; Which is the more noble being?

The one that lazily watches an area four inches around with an over weening pride and who turns all it eats into excrement and venom? Producing nothing but fly bane and a cobweb?

Or I, who by a global range, with perseverance, patient study, good judgment and discernment brings home honey and wax?