hive quotes

   And the gods are absent and the men are still Noli me tangere, my soul is forfeit. Some are now happy in the hive of home, Thigh over thigh and a light in the night nursery, And some are hungry under the starry dome And some sit turning handles.

- (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
  Autumn Journal, part 2.

   In youth, before I waxe'  d old, The blind boy,Venus' baby, For want of cunning made me bold, In bitter hive to grope for honey.

- Edmund Spenser
  Amoretti,'Anacreontics', no.1.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'The Lake Isle of Innisfree', stanzas1^2. Collected in The Rose (1893).