stery of their marvellous lives, or in
relation to the emotion which their sweet and melancholy music makes
within our minds. The impressions produced by hearing the shrilling of
crickets at night or by hearing the storm of cicadae in summer woods--those
impressions indeed are admirable subjects for poetry, and will continue to
be for all time.

When I lectured to you long ago about Greek and English poems on insects,
I told you that nearly all the English poems on the subject were quite
modern. I still believe that I was right in this statement, as a general
assertion; but I have found one quaint poem about a grasshopper, which
must have been written about the middle of the seventeenth century or,
perhaps, a little earlier. The date of the author's birth and death are
respectively 1618 and 1658. His name, I think, you are familiar
with--Richard Lovelace, author of many amatory poems, and of one
especially famous song, "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars"--containing the
celebrated stanza--

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

Well, as I said, this man wrote one pretty little poem on a grasshopper,
which antedates most of the English poems on insects, if not all of them.

THE GRASSHOPPER

O Thou that swing'st upon the waving ear
Of some well-filled oaten beard,
Drunk every night with a delicious tear
Dropt thee from heaven, where now th'art rear'd!

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,
That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;
And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then,
Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men
Thyself, and melancholy streams.

A little artificial, this poem written at least two hundred and fifty
years ago; but it is pretty in spite of its artifice. Some of the conceits
are so quaint that they must be explained. By the term "oaten beard," the
poet means an ear of oats; and you know that the grain of this plant is
furnished with very long hair, so that many poets have spoken of the
bearded oats. You may remember in this connection Tennyson's phrase "the
bearded barley" in the "Lady of Shalott," and Longfellow's term "bearded
grain" in his famous poem about the Reaper Death. When a person's beard is
very thick, we say in England to-day