The Grasshopper

Fable by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian Period 18th century

It is done, I leave the world;
I wish to flee forever the hateful spectacle
of crimes, of horrors, with which my eyes are wounded.
In a deep retreat,
far from vices, far from abuses,
I shall pass my days gently cursing
the wicked, too well known to me.
Alone here below I have virtues:
thus as an enemy I have all that breathes,
the whole universe is against me; man, children, animals,
even the smallest of birds,
all are occupied in harming me.
Ah! What have I done though? … only good. The ingrates!
They will miss me, but after my death.
Thus lamented a certain grasshopper,
hypochondriac and esteeming only herself.
Where do you get that, my sister?
Said one of her companions to her:
what! You cannot live in these fields
by grazing on the sweet and tender flower of these meadows,
without troubling yourself with the affairs of the world?
I know that it abounds in obstacles:
it was always so, and always will be;
what you say about it will not change a thing.
Besides, where does one live better? As for your anger
against those enemies who only want to harm you,
I think, my sister, between us,
that it is perhaps a chimera,
and that pride often gives these visions.
Disdaining to answer these silly reasons,
the grasshopper leaves, and exits the prairie,
her homeland.
She hopped two days to go two hundred steps.
Then she believes herself at the end of the hemisphere,
among an unknown people, in new states;
she admires these beautiful climates,
greets with respect this foreign shore.
Nearby, numerous ears of wheat
on long stalks, six feet from the ground,
waving and pressed, balanced among themselves.
Ah, here is truly my affair!
She said with transport: in these dark thickets
I will doubtless find a solitary desert;
it is a safe asylum against my enemies.
There she is in the wheat. But, from the next dawn,
here come the reapers.
Their numerous and noisy troop
spreads in a half-circle, and, amid the clamors,
the laughter, the songs of the young girls,
the piled ears fall under the sickles,
the earth is uncovered, and the cut wheat
leaves the furrows all bare.
This time, cried the sad grasshopper,
here is what truly proves the universal hatred
that pursues me everywhere: scarcely in this country
has it been known that I was here, than a people of enemies
comes to seek its victim.
In the fury that animates them,
employing against me the most dreadful means,
for fear that I might escape they ravage their own goods:
they would set fire to them, if it were necessary.
Ah! Gentlemen, here I am, she says, showing herself;
finish such a great task,
I deliver myself to your anger.
A reaper, at that moment,
by chance distinguishes her; he bends down, takes her,
and says, throwing her into a flowering grass:
go eat, my little friend.

Florian

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-grasshopper-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian/