known to the Greeks. Some varieties are truly musical; but the majority are astonishingly noisy,—so noisy that their stridulation[1] is considered one of the great afflictions of summer. Therefore it were[2] vain to seek among the myriads of Japanese verses on semi for anything comparable to the lines of Evenus above quoted; indeed, the only Japanese poem that I could find on the subject of a cicada caught by a bird, was the following:—
Ana kanashi
Tobi ni toraruru
Semi no koe.—Ransetsu.
Ah! how piteous the cry of the semi seized by the kite!
Or "caught by a boy" the poet might equally well have observed,—this being a much more frequent cause of the pitiful cry. The lament of Nicias[3] for the tettix would serve as the elegy of many a semi:—
"No more shall I delight myself by sending out a sound from my quick-moving wings, because I have fallen into the savage hand of a boy, who seized me unexpectedly, as I was sitting under the green leaves."
註
