OT Grasshopper and Ant
The seventeenth-century French poet, Jean de Lafontaine, did a version of this in verse. I once did this translation (printed awhile back in something called the Southern Poetry Review):
Had to change the grasshopper to a cricket--and actually Lafontaine made him into a cicada.
The Cricket, having sung
All summer long
Found he had nothing to his name
When at length the cold winds came:
Not a single tiny nub
Of a housefly or a grub.
He, since he was starving, went
Begging to his friend, the ant,
Asking if he just might borrow
Food enough to last the morrow--
Just enough to keep him fed
Till Spring. "I'll pay you back," he said,
"That's only cricket! By next fall
With interest on the principal."
No lender, though, was madam ant;
Her least defect was usury.
"How did you spend the summer, say?"
She asked that lowly mendicant.
"I sang for all, both nights and days,
If you don't mond my saying so!"
"You sang! Well good for you! Now go
And dance a while. See if that pays!"
I would like to think that soon after that the Cricket got a recording contract and that his record sold well. |
