care. The most celebrated one
among these I quoted in a former lecture--the poem about the little Greek
girl Myro who made a tomb for her grasshopper and cried over it. Heredia
has very well copied the Greek feeling in this fine sonnet:

Ici git, Etranger, la verte sauterelle
Que durant deux saisons nourrit la jeune Helle,
Et dont l'aile vibrant sous le pied dentele.
Bruissait dans le pin, le cytise, ou l'airelle.

Elle s'est tue, helas! la lyre naturelle,
La muse des guerets, des sillons et du ble;
De peur que son leger sommeil ne soit trouble,
Ah, passe vite, ami, ne pese point sur elle.

C'est la. Blanche, au milieu d'une touffe de thym,
Sa pierre funeraire est fraichement posee.
Que d'hommes n'ont pas eu ce supreme destin!

Des larmes d'un enfant la tombe est arrosee,
Et l'Aurore pieuse y fait chaque matin
Une libation de gouttes de rosee.

"Stranger, here reposes the green grasshopper that the young girl Helle
cared for during two seasons,--the grasshopper whose wings, vibrating
under the strokes of its serrated feet, used to resound in the pine, the
trefoil and the whortleberry.

"She is silent now, alas! that natural lyre, muse of the unsown fields, of
the furrows, and of the wheat. Lest her light sleep should be disturbed,
ah! pass quickly, friend! do not be heavy upon her.

"It is there. All white, in the midst of a tuft of thyme, her funeral
monument is placed, in cool shadow; how many men have not been able to
have this supremely happy end!

"By the tears of a child the insect's tomb is watered; and the pious
goddess of dawn each morning there makes a libation of drops of dew."

This reads very imperfectly in a hasty translation; the original charm is
due to the perfect art of the form. But the whole thing, as I have said
before, is really Greek, and based upon a close study of several little
Greek poems on the same kind of subject. Little Greek girls thousands of
years ago used to keep singing insects as pets, every day feeding them
with slices of leek and with fresh water, putting in their little cages
sprigs of the plants which they liked. The sorrow of the child for the
inevitable death of her insect pets at the approach of winter, seems to
have inspired many Greek poets. With all tenderness, the child would make
a small grave for the insect, bury it solemnly, and put a little white
stone above the place to imitate a grave-stone. But of course she would
want an in