'Thanks for This Fancy, Insect King'

I once spent most of a day in an upstate New York marsh with a neuroethologist, a biologist who studies how an animal’s nervous system determines its behavior. His specialty was the order Odonata – dragonflies and damselflies. Like any journalist who’s paying attention, I got a free education. These elusive, jewel-like insects rank (with hawks and ladybugs) among nature’s most viciously efficient hunters. His research showed their kill rate topped ninety-seven percent. Eighty percent of a dragonfly’s brain is devoted to vision, and their field of vision is 360 degrees. 

This is the time of year in Texas when we see the first seasonal return of various species, from dormancy during the winter cold or migration. The first monarch butterfly visited our front garden about two weeks ago. Every day I see anoles on the ground and among the leaves of various plants, mosquitoes and a male cardinal singing in a crepe myrtle, likely seeking a mate. Informally, out of admiration for their hunting prowess, I’ve collected a small anthology of dragonfly poems, including my favorite, “The Dragonfly” (1961) by Louise Bogan, and “The Dragon-Fly” (1833) by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Here is my latest discovery, “Lines to a Dragon Fly” (1806) by Walter Savage Landor:

 

“Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream;

I wish no happier one than to be laid

Beneath some cool syringa’s scented shade

Or wavy willow, by the running stream,

Brimful of Moral, where the Dragon Fly

Wanders as careless and content as I.

 

“Thanks for this fancy, insect king,

Of purple crest and filmy wing,

Who with indifference givest up

The water-lily’s golden cup,

To come again and overlook

What I am writing in my book.

Believe me, most who read the line

Will read with hornier eyes than thine;

And yet their souls shall live for ever,

And thine drop dead into the river!

God pardon them, O insect king,

Who fancy so unjust a thing!”

 

Less entomologically acute than Bogan’s poem, Landor’s is typically Romantic and not rigorously scientific. “Hornier” doesn’t mean what you think. The OED gives “callous or hardened so as to be horn-like in texture,” like a weapon.