One morning she met the handsome youth, Tithonus. Aurora loved Tithonus, and, as he was a mortal, she begged the gods to give him immortal life. Unfortunately, she forgot to ask for him immortal youth, and after a while he began to grow old. Although he still lived in her palace and fed on ambrosia, the food of the gods, he became smaller and smaller, until Aurora was ashamed of him and turned him into a grasshopper.
This is the way you see him to-day—with the face of an old man on the body of a grasshopper.
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the grasshopper’s,—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for, when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems, to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
A. B. Thorwaldsen.
Night.
AURORA AND MEMNON.
Memnon was the son of Aurora and Tithonus, and was dearly loved by his young and beautiful mother. He became a very brave man. When the Trojan war broke out, he came from the East to help the Trojans. At first he was successful, and he put the Greeks to flight; but when Achilles met him, a great struggle began. Long they fought and bravely; but at last Memnon fell.