Journal Entry: September 13, 1890

“The bee does not gather his honey from the flowers; it is mainly his product. What he gathers from flower is sweet water – diluted grape sugar. Out of this she makes honey by a kind of digestive assimilation. It is not honey till the bee has added something special and peculiar herself. It is precisely so with the poet. He gets only the raw material of his poetry from Nature – himself must be added, his spiritual and emotional quality, before it becomes poetry. Indeed, it is so with true literature of any kind. Tis what the man himself adds to his facts or truths or teaching that makes it literature”

According to the hand-written notes on Betty Kelly’s transcription, this thought was used in in an introduction to an edition of Wake Robin. It is a perfect example of the many ways in which Burroughs draws a connection between man and Nature through writing while maintaining a very scientific and factual observation of his environment.