Besides poems about the chanting of particular insects, there are countless Japanese poems, ancient and modern, upon the voices of night-insects in general,—chiefly in relation to the autumn season. Out of a multitude I have selected and translated a few of the more famous only, as typical of the sentiment or fancy of hundreds. Although some of my renderings are far from literal as to language, I believe that they express with tolerable faithfulness the thought and feeling of the originals:—
Not for my sake alone, I know, is the autumn’s coming;—
Yet, hearing the insects sing, at once my heart grows sad.
Kokinshū.
Faint in the moonshine sounds the chorus of insect-voices:
To-night the sadness of autumn speaks in their plaintive tone.
I never can find repose in the chilly nights of autumn,
Because of the pain I hear in the insects’ plaintive song.
How must it be in the fields where the dews are falling thickly!
In the insect-voices that reach me I hear the tingling of cold.
Never I dare to take my way through the grass in autumn:
Should I tread upon insect-voices[15]—what would my feelings be!
The song is ever the same, but the tones of the insects differ,
Maybe their sorrows vary, according to their hearts.
Idzumi-Shikibu.