Written for a children’s songbook, this poem reflects Eberhard’s lifelong fascination with the natural world, and his insistence that nature study be part of every child’s education, so that each might grasp “the coherence of nature and of humanity, and the unity and communal character of all forms of life.”

For our children
See how the bee-people swarm together –
what perfect oneness they display!
They build and serve and work as one.
With “mine” and “thine” they do away.

When they return to nurse their young,
then, too, they are completely one.
They share the harvest of each blossom,
and none lives for himself alone.

Bees know the impulse of true oneness –
a wondrous sign of community.
A people of love, they toil as one,
and none is left out of their unity.

Sannerz, 1921

As published in Poems and Rhymed Prayers (Rifton, NY: Plough, 2011).

Article edited for length and clarity.