August poetry Selection: The Grasshopper

      

This 1884 illustration depicts a truly scary figure -- a grasshopper big enough for a grown man to ride. It probably reflects their oversized devastation and farmers' fears. This is from the Wichita, Kansas Weekly Eagle.

In late July 1874 after an already tough summer drought, a cloud descended on the great prairies of the United States. Grasshoppers. The Rocky Mountain locust, a species now extinct, swarmed in numbers so great that they blocked out the sun. They ate everything in sight, not only devastating crops, but stripping trees of their leaves and reportedly even eating wool from live sheep and the wooden handles of farm tools. Southeastern Kansas, where my ancestors the Patchetts lived, and specifically Fawn Creek Township, their home, was not immune. It’s not surprising the grasshopper would become a subject of poetry. Here is a small sampling.

“Epitaph on a Maggoty Grasshopper,” The Weekly News-Democrat (Emporia, Kansas), 6 Aug 1875

This is the varmint –

The ravishing hopper,

Ain’t he a whopper?

His cheek is like copper;

He’s a robber, a ranger:

An unwelcome stranger,

A breeder of famine,

Give him the damnin’.

Of hunger he died not,

Neither from gunshot.

But his belly he trusted

Too long and it busted.

"Ode To the Grasshoppers," The Ogden Junction (Ogden, Utah), 16 Sept 1876, p. 8.

Insect or reptile winged! Whate'er thou art

Thou claimest thy share, and takest more than thy part.

Gorging on vegetation, fresh and green---

Thy body is a wonderful machine.

Within elastic, without, iron-clad,

Thy purpose diabolically bad---

On plunder and destruction thou art bent,

Devouring all, with little not content.

Thy sight is quick, thy tiny eyes like fire

Peer into nature as if to defy her.

A terror to the farmer and his crops

Thy reign commenced, uncertain when it stops,

Thy music is no better than a dirge---

Thou art at best, a sad, distressing scourge---

A beast of destruction sweeping fields

And lovely valleys every foot that yields.

Thy numbers, countless too, as grains of sand

Spread o'er the verdant surface of the land,

Or swarm in myriads on the horizon,

Filling the air and darkening the sun,

Then falling like an army on the grain

Consuming to consume till all is slain.

Bold and defiant, coming not by stealth,

Robbing the poor man of his hard-earned wealth

And preying on the choicest plants and fruits

Eating the tendrils off into the roots,

Crowding the trees and hanging on like leeches,

To apples, pears, plums, apricots and peaches,

Stripping the branches of their bark and leaves---

Midnight assassins! ye, and daylight thieves.

I cannot greet thee with more pleasant rhymes

So hence, ye locusts, on to other climes!

The sum of your existence I would find---

For what you were created and designed.

I would not make a rash or cruel wish

For bird or insect, animal or fish,

But thou I do detest, thy race I abhor

Unconquerable, insatiable, grasshopper!

"The Ten Little Grasshoppers," The Manitowoc Tribune (Manitowoc, Wisconsin), 28 March 1878, p. 1.

Ten little grasshoppers,

Sitting on a vine;

One ate too much green corn,

Then there were nine.

Nine little grasshoppers,

Just the size for bait;

A little boy went fishing,

Then there were but eight.

The poem continued in a countdown, until the last stanza:

One little grasshopper,

Chirped good-bye at the door;

Said he'd come next summer, with nine million more.

By 1901, long after these poems were written, the U.S. government had done a lot of research into the grasshopper scourge. The article above is from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Simmons, Charlotte. “Grasshopper Corn,” Kansas State Register (Spring Hill, Kansas), 20 July 1878

On toward the village drove good Farmer Brown

With his young roan and old dapple gray;

With a “Steady there, Roan,” or a, “Dapple, get up,”

He cheerily guided the way.

He had willingly worked with his toil-hardened hands

All that frosty but bright winter morn

His wagon was heaped with the rich golden ears,

But alas! It was grasshopper corn. 

Now the coat that covered his big burly form

Was a many-patched, coarse, homespun blue,

But the heart that throbbed under, and lit the gray eyes

Were affectionate, honest and true. 

He had toiled through discouragements early and late

By the christian faith always upborn;

But harvest had come, he was reaping at last,

But oh! It was grasshopper corn.

His good wife had told him the evening before

That the coal oil and coffee were low,

That the sugar was out, as were little Tom’s toes,

And they needed some stocking yarn too;

That Mary and Susie should have a new dress;

Neddy’s trousers were looking forlorn.

“I’ll get all I can,” he said with a sigh,

“But we’ve nothing but grasshopper corn.”

“And Papa,” the youngest child coaxingly said,

As she climbed to her place on his knee.

“Tomorrow is Christmas, and oh! can’t you get

Some candy for brother and me?

“We’d hang up our stockings, as we did long ago,

Although they are very much worn.

But mamma has told us, ‘twould be of no use,

When we’ve nothing but grasshopper corn.

     There were four more stanzas – and it wasn’t a happy ending. Farmer Brown could find no one willing to pay more than ten cents a bushel, so he did not sell his corn. In the last stanza, the poet, Charlotte Simmons, admonished readers to “Think of the wants in the homes of the poor,” and pay more than ten cents a bushel for corn. The editor said she was a local woman. The poem was a second printing, by request, and the editor hoped it would inspire people not to be extravagant, but to lay aside savings to meet “similar panics of partial or total starvation.” 

     The next poem was written by a southerner, not someone who witnessed the horrific effects of the “grasshopper days.” A decade after that time, The Coffeyville, Kansas newspaper editor must have thought readers were ready for a pleasant nature poem about the creatures. 

Hayne, William H. “The Grasshopper,” Coffeyville Weekly Journal (Coffeyville, Kansas), 23 Aug 1884, p. 1. 

He jumps so high in the sun and shade

I stop to see him pass –

A gymnast of the glen and glade,

Whose circus is the grass!

The sand is ‘round him like a ring –

He has no wish to halt –

I see the supple fellow spring

To make a somersault!

Though he is volatile and fat,

His feet are slim as pegs,

How can his restless motion last

Upon such slender legs?

Below him lazy beetles creep;

He gyrates ‘round and ‘round –

One moment vaulting in a leap,

The next upon the ground!

He hops amid the fallen twigs

So agile in his glee,

I’m sure he’s danced a thousand jigs

With no one near to see!

He tumbles up, he tumbles down!

And from his motley hue,

‘Tis clear he is an insect clown

Beneath a tent of blue. 

Long after the grasshopper plagues of the 1870s, The San Francisco Examiner ran a page on government attempts to eradicate the agricultural pest. This is from a 1903 page:

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2023