Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
‘Cocked hats were worn at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries; the Napoleonic era. They had rather jaunty upturned brims and this one is 'straw’ — something flimsy. The expression to be ‘knocked into a cocked hat’ means to be beaten severely as Napoleon was. The ‘swarm’ here is the Grand Army rather than the bees. 

The Swarm