little more than a mere colourless mention of the passing of the insect.  However, it so happens that the finest modern lines of pure description written about any insect, are about dragon-flies.  And they also happen to be by Tennyson.  Naturalists and men of science have greatly praised these lines, because of their truth to nature and the accuracy of observation which they show.  You will find them in the poem entitled “The Two Voices.”

  To-day I saw the dragon-fly
  Come from the wells where he did lie.

  An inner impulse rent the veil
  Of his old husk; from head to tail
  Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

  He dried his wings; like gauze they grew;
  Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
  A living rush of light he flew.

There are very few real poems, however, upon the dragon-fly in English, and considering the extraordinary beauty and grace of the insect, this may appear strange to you.  But I think that you can explain the strangeness at a later time.  The silence of English poets on the subject of insects as compared with Japanese poets is due to general causes that we shall consider at the close of the lecture.

Common flies could scarcely seem to be a subject for poetry—­disgusting and annoying creatures as they are.  But there are more poems about the house-fly than about the dragon-fly.  Last year I quoted for you a remarkable and rather mystical composition by the poet Blake about accidentally killing a fly.  Blake represents his own thoughts about the brevity of human life which had been aroused by the incident.  It is charming little poem; but it does not describe the fly at all.  I shall not quote it here again, because we shall have many other things to talk about; but I shall give you the text of a famous little composition by Oldys on the same topic.  It has almost the simplicity of Blake,—­and certainly something of the same kind of philosophy.

  Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
  Drink with me and drink as I;
  Freely welcome to my cup,
  Couldst thou sip and sip it up: 
  Make the most of life you may,
  Life is short and wears away.

  Both alike are mine and thine
  Hastening quick to their decline: 
  Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more,
  Though repeated to threescore. 
  Threescore summers, when they’re gone,
  Will appear as short as one!

The suggestion is that, after all, time is only a very relative affair in the cosmic order of things.  The life of the man of sixty years is not much longer than the life of the insect which lives but a few hours, days, or months.  Had Oldys, who belongs to the eighteenth century, lived in our own time, he might have been able to write something very much more curious on this subject.  It is now known that time, to the mind of an insect, must appear immensely longer than it appears to the mind of a man.  It has been calculated that a mosquito or a gnat moves its wings