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May/June 2002 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Grasshoppers À la carte Mosaic Reverberations

Friend or foe? | It’s a bug’s life | Grasshopper facts | Grasshopper anatomy
Grasshoppers on film | Nature’s symphony | Literary hoppers | Archives

Grasshoppers have figured in literature for centuries, though for the most part not in the most flattering light. Aesop maligned them as lazy, self-indulgent creatures while the Bible labeled them harbingers of despair. But at least a few writers have seen beauty embodied in the long-legged critters. Here is a sampling of the poetry and prose that borrows from this image-impaired insect.

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
Copyright © 1992 by Mary Oliver
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston

On the Grasshopper and Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s — he takes the lead
In summer luxury — he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

— John Keats (1795-1821)

As printed online by Purple Mountain Media Co., copyright-free.
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The Ants and the Grasshopper
The Ants were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?" He replied, "I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing." They then said in derision: "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter."

— Aesop

As printed online by literature.org, copyright-free.
http://www.literature.org

The Grasshopper and the Owl
An Owl, accustomed to feed at night and to sleep during the day, was greatly disturbed by the noise of a Grasshopper and earnestly besought her to stop chirping. The Grasshopper refused to desist, and chirped louder and louder the more the Owl entreated. When she saw that she could get no redress and that her words were despised, the Owl attacked the chatterer by a stratagem. "Since I cannot sleep," she said, "on account of your song which, believe me, is sweet as the lyre of Apollo, I shall indulge myself in drinking some nectar which Pallas lately gave me. If you do not dislike it, come to me and we will drink it together." The Grasshopper, who was thirsty, and pleased with the praise of her voice, eagerly flew up. The Owl came forth from her hollow, seized her, and put her to death.

— Aesop

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http://www.literature.org

"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour."

— Edmund Burke

From Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 16th edition

Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers go in many a thrumming spring
And now to stalks of tasseled sour-grass cling,
That shakes and sways awhile, but still keeps straight,
While arching oxeye doubles with his weight.
Next on the cat-tail grass with farther bound
He spring, that bends until they touch the ground.

— John Clare, (1793-1864)

As printed online by Purple Mountain Media Co., copyright-free.
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"The almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."

Ecclesiastes, 12:5-7
Quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 16th edition

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