Several such Greek poems are extant, recounting how children mourned for pet insects which had died in spite of all their care.

The most celebrated one among these I quoted in a former lecture--the poem about the little Greek girl Myro who made a tomb for her grasshopper and cried over it.

Heredia has very well copied the Greek feeling in this fine sonnet: Ici git, Etranger, la verte sauterelle Que durant deux saisons nourrit la jeune Helle, Et dont l'aile vibrant sous le pied dentele.
Bruissait dans le pin, le cytise, ou l'airelle.
Elle s'est tue, helas! la lyre naturelle, La muse des guerets, des sillons et du ble; De peur que son leger sommeil ne soit trouble, Ah, passe vite, ami, ne pese point sur elle.
C'est la.

Blanche, au milieu d'une touffe de thym, Sa pierre funeraire est fraichement posee.
Que d'hommes n'ont pas eu ce supreme destin! Des larmes d'un enfant la tombe est arrosee, Et l'Aurore pieuse y fait chaque matin Une libation de gouttes de rosee.
"Stranger, here reposes the green grasshopper that the young girl Helle cared for during two seasons,--the grasshopper whose wings, vibrating under the strokes of its serrated feet, used to resound in the pine, the trefoil and the whortleberry.
"She is silent now, alas! that natural lyre, muse of the unsown fields, of the furrows, and of the wheat.

Lest her light sleep should be disturbed, ah! pass quickly, friend! do not be heavy upon her.
"It is there.