Still is the toiling hand of care: 
    The panting herds repose: 
  Yet hark, how through the peopled air
   The busy murmur glows! 
  The insect youth are on the wing,
  Eager to taste the honied spring,
  And float amid the liquid noon: 
  Some lightly o’er the current skim,
  Some show their gaily-gilded trim
    Quick-glancing to the sun.

  To Contemplation’s sober eye
    Such is the race of man: 
  And they that creep, and they that fly,
    Shall end where they began. 
  Alike the Busy and the Gay
  But flutter through life’s little day,
  In fortune’s varying colours dressed: 
  Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
  Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
    They leave, in dust to rest.

  Methinks I hear in accents low
    The sportive kind reply: 
  Poor moralist! and what art thou? 
    A solitary fly! 
  Thy joys no glittering female meets,
  No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
  No painted plumage to display: 
  On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
  Thy sun is set; thy spring is gone—­
    We frolic, while ’tis May.

The poet Gray was never married, and the last stanza which I have quoted refers jocosely to himself.  It is an artistic device to set off the moral by a little mockery, so that it may not appear too melancholy.

CHAPTER XI

SOME FRENCH POEMS ABOUT INSECTS

Last year I gave a lecture on the subject of English poems about insects, with some reference to the old Greek poems on the same subject.  But I did not then have an opportunity to make any reference to French poems upon the same subject, and I think that it would be a pity not to give you a few examples.

Just as in the case of English poems about insects, nearly all the French literature upon this subject is new.  Insect poetry belongs to the newer and larger age of thought, to the age that begins to perceive the great truth of the unity of life.  We no longer find, even in natural histories, the insect treated as a mere machine and unthinking organism; on the contrary its habits, its customs and its manifestation both of intelligence and instinct are being very carefully studied in these times, and a certain sympathy, as well as a certain feeling of respect or admiration, may be found in the scientific treatises of the greatest men who write about insect life.  So, naturally, Europe is slowly returning to the poetical standpoint of the old Greeks in this respect.  It is not improbable that keeping caged insects as pets may again become a Western custom, as it was in Greek times, when cages were made of rushes or straw for the little creatures.  I suppose you have heard that the Japanese custom is very likely to become a fashion in America.  If that should really happen, the fact would certainly have an effect upon poetry.  I think that it is very likely to happen.