"Sensuous" the poet correctly calls it; for it is a form of praise of woman's beauty in all its details, as appears in such famous verses as these: "How beautiful are thy feet in shoes, O prince's daughter; the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins which feed among the lilies." But Christianity, instead of dismissing this part of the Bible, interpreted the song mystically--insisting that the woman described meant the Church, and the lover, Christ.

Of course only very pious people continue to believe this; even the good Whittier preferred the legend that it was written about the Queen of Sheba.
I suppose that I ought to end this lecture upon insect poetry by some quotation to which a moral or philosophical meaning can be attached.

I shall end it therefore with a quotation from the poet Gray.

The poetry of insects may be said to have first appeared in English literature during the second half of the eighteenth century, so that it is only, at the most, one hundred and fifty years old.