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.
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