When chased away from the oats and from the wheat, they will migrate to the scorched bushes which die of thirst in the wastes of sand.
"Upon the leafless shrubs, upon the dried up thistles, which let their white hair fall and float away, there the sturdily-built insect can be seen again, filled with enthusiasm, even more and more excited as he cries, "Until, at last, opening his wings, now rent into shreds, exasperated, burning more and more fiercely in the frenzy of his excitement, and with his eyes of bronze always fixed motionlessly upon the azure sky, he dies in his song upon the withered grain." This is difficult to translate at all satisfactorily, owing to the multitude of images compressed together.

But the idea expressed is a fine one--the courage of the insect challenging the sun, and only chanting more and more as the heat and the thirst increase.

The poem has, if you like, the fault of exaggeration, but the colour and music are very fine; and even the exaggeration itself has the merit of making the images more vivid.
It will not be necessary to quote another text; we shall scarcely have the time; but I want to translate to you something of another poem upon the same insect by the modern French poet Jean Aicard.

In this poem, as in the little poem by Gautier, which I quoted to you, the writer puts his thought in the mouth of the insect, so to say--that is, makes the insect tell its own story.
"I am the impassive and noble insect that sings in the summer solstice from the dazzling dawn all the day long in the fragrant pine-wood.

And my song is always the same, regular as the equal course of the season and of the sun.