The Ant and the Grasshopper : An Inequality Fable
Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on inequality. You can read the introductory post for the Symposium here. To see a list of all posts in the Symposium so far, click here.
Once upon a time, my children, in a small thicket there lived a young grasshopper that liked to sing and dance all the live long day. He was a smart grasshopper, as grasshoppers go, and he came from a good and loving family. Unlike some of the other forest insects the grasshopper never wanted for much, because his parents were both good and successful.
One day a small boy trying to complete a science fair project came and put both of his parents in a glass jar, stealing them away forever. This made the grasshopper quite sad, as you might imagine. He mourned for what seemed like a proper amount of time, and then he returned to his life of singing and dancing all the live long day.
Now in this same thicket lived a very large colony of ants. They were an industrious lot, and spent all day every day toiling, working hard each day to make sure that there would be enough food for the winter – which as everyone knows arrives each year come what may. That summer after his parents had been taken away, the grasshopper would call out to the ants: “Come, ants, play with me!” The ants just scolded him and said, “If you want to succeed, you must work hard! For if you do not, what will you eat come winter?” But the grasshopper had never labored before, and as he did not think that it looked like much fun he politely declined.
Well, my children, as you know winter indeed comes to all places, and so it was for the grasshopper’s thicket. He was alright at first, but as the snows continued to fall and the months began to pile up he found himself without food, just as the ants had warned. Having no other choice, he went to the ants with hat in hand, and begged their queen for food.
Now, the queen was was wise and kind, and so agreed to feed the grasshopper. However, the queen knew an opportunity when she saw one, and she knew that the grasshopper came from old money. “I’m feeding you now,” she said as he gorged himself on the ants’ winter larder, “but I do worry that next year another a younger ant might try to be elected queen in my place. Perhaps you could spare just a bit of money for my reelection campaign?” And so began a beautiful partnership.
Now the grasshopper was no fool, and once winter subsided and the first blades of grass began to poke through the thawing ground, he decided that if he did not wish to labour he would need to find a way to keep himself in the pink. He used the money his parents had left buying the ants’ businesses, and investing the profits of those businesses with banks both far and near. Also, once the businesses were secure, the grasshopper found that he could make more money by closing them down, and reopening them in a thicket across the pond, where food was quite scarce and those other ants would do the work for far less pay. He was a very clever grasshopper indeed! As the year wore on, the grasshopper found that his chest of money grew until it dwarfed what his parents had earned.
Late that summer, the queen came to the grasshopper and asked for a favor. “I am glad that you are so successful in your enterprises, grasshopper!” said the queen. “But I fear that because you are sending our supplies across the pond we are in danger of having too little food for the winter. Might I ask you to bring some of those jobs and supplies back to this thicket, that all insects will be able to eat this winter?”
“It’s not my affair if people can’t do an honest day’s work,” scolded the grasshopper.
“But they do,” countered the queen, “they are very industrious. They wish to work, but many of the jobs are gone, as is much of the food. Even those that work two jobs may not be able to afford to feed their families this winter.”
“I do not deal with Socialists,” said the grasshopper coldly, and threw the queen out.
That fall a new queen was elected with the financial backing of the grasshopper, on a platform of jobs and freedom. The old queen had been very nice, but the new queen was even nicer! She not only let him buy the thicket’s banks, she graciously lifted troublesome banking regulations that allowed the grasshopper to make even more money on investments by using the ants’ pension funds on risky gambles the ants were not aware were happening. She also kindly eliminated the mean-spirited rules that made him disclose accurate financial statements to other investors. Soon the grasshopper had more treasure than any insect in the history of the thicket.
Now I am most sorry to have to tell you this, but that winter was a tough one and many of the banks the grasshopper had taken over collapsed because the books were not as they were reported, and the risky investments did not all pan out. But fear not, my children, because the grasshopper was clever enough to have cleared most of the profits through commissions prior to filing bankruptcy, and so was even richer than before!
When they discovered what had happened to their life savings, many of those lazy, lazy ants began to complain loudly about the lack of winter food, and their inability to get money from the banks that had collapsed.
“Don’t look at me,” said the grasshopper in an interview on FOXNews. “I can’t help it if ants are lazy. If they loved food so much, why didn’t they divest their banking investments and put ten million dollars or so in the bio-tech markets last summer like I did? Duh.”
Now my children, despite the grasshoppers wise words most of the ants were as lazy and shiftless as they had always been, and they made petty excuses that they were actually working more hours now than they had when the grasshopper’s parents were still alive, and yet they could barely put food on the table. Ants, you see, are whiners and not job creators. The colony survived that winter, but it was tough going for most of the ants.
Things in the thicket continued to be hard for the ants that spring and summer. Because of this, the new queen was most unpopular, and was overthrown that fall by the new, new queen, whose campaign was financed by the grasshopper and who ran on a platform of jobs and freedom. But as wonderful as the new, new queen was, my children, as the winter came there simply wasn’t enough food for the colony. They went to the grasshopper, since it was common knowledge that he now now had a winter larder the size of an oak tree. He told them all to leave him alone. “If you people really wanted food,” he said to the ants, “you would have heavily invested in Apple thirty years ago.”
With that, the ants had had enough. They dragged the grasshopper from his home and tore the legs right off of him, and then cut his head off and put it on a pike right next to the head of the new, new queen, and they cursed the grasshopper’s name forever more. The new government that the ants formed was based more on anger and spite than rational thought, and so things actually got much worse that winter and it was a very, very long time before things got better in the thicket.
Moral: We tend to forget this, but it isn’t only in the poor’s interest to keep inequality from getting out of hand.
I always preferred the original version.Report
I’ve always wondered, which *is* the original – the one where they feed the grasshopper and he learns, or the one where they don’t and he dies? I remember reading many versions of both growing up.Report
I always assumed that the ones with the “if you don’t follow my advice, you will *DIE*” are the older ones from the days when people died at the drop of a hat.
Once there was enough leisure to be nice, people realized that they didn’t want to tell their little girls stories about Little Red Riding Hood being sexually assaulted.Report
The original was the one which ended with the Grasshopper starving to death in the snow. The notion of the ant’s lack of charity being something to also avoid had been discussed through the years and there were other versions which bent the story to emphasize the importance of art. However, the original story remained largely unchanged until Disney made a cartoon in the 30s. That cartoon was what really popularized the notion of not letting grasshoppers die in the snow.Report
I prefer a version in which the grasshopper earns his keep by entertaining the ants. It seems clear to me that there was the basis for a mutually beneficial exchange, unless the ants have no interest in entertainment/music, in which case they’re soul-less sods and the ‘hopper’s advised to steer clear of them.Report
That was the Disney version.Report
*applauds, stomps feet on the boards*Report
Was this some kind of metaphor?Report
I wasn’t thinking about inequality at all. I was trying to remember which Holmes story had the book code (like the second episode of Sherlock), and some Googling turned up the last and least of the novels, The Valley of Fear. Its backstory is based on the real-life Molly Maguires, who were a 19th Century society of coal miners who, depending on whom you believe, were a gang of cutthroats, or an incipient union slandered ans persecuted by the mine owners and the Pinkertons. The Wikipedia article about them contains this section on the Panic of 1873:
The period from 1873-79 (see Panic of 1873) was marked by one of the worst depressions in the nation’s history, caused by economic overexpansion, a stock crash, and a decrease in the money supply. By 1877 an estimated one-fifth of the nation’s workingmen were completely unemployed, two-fifths worked no more than six or seven months a year, and only one-fifth had full-time jobs.
Labor angrily watched “railway directors (riding) about the country in luxurious private cars proclaiming their inability to pay living wages to hungry working men.”
Which made me think: were the destitute really any worse off because the rich lived in such ostentatious wealth? (It also made me wonder how a depression could last 6 years without a traitor to his class or an illegal alien marxist to prolong it, but that’s a discussion for another time.)Report
One of the unspoken truths of the Great Depression is that the actual damage, much like today, was restricted to lower and middle class workers.
Despite the fact that nearly everyone in the country was hurt to some degree by onset of the Depression, the 1930’s was a period of exacerbted class conflict. One possible reason for this was the divergent responses which upper and lower class individuals had to the crisis. While many of the richest people in America lost money when the stock market crashed, the upper classes as a whole still retained much of the wealth which they had held before the Depression and in most cases did not suffer from unemployment. Perhaps as a way of displaying their continued prosperity in the face of nationwide suffering (or of trying to show up their social equals who may have been hit harder by the crash) many among the upper classes began to flaunt their wealth more than ever. Working class Americans, many of whom were thrown out of work by the Depression (which they often correctly blamed upon the reckless financial dealings of the upper classes) were shocked and angered by this ostentatious display of wealth.
Remind you of anything today? This article is what Mark and I were talking about with the effects of social stratification and lack of socialization between classes.
Underlying the whole problem is that in the Great Depression just as today, policies enacted to primarily benefit the upper class ended in harm to the lower and middle class when economic mismanagement and the effects of concentrative policies hit their ultimate end.
The upper class are highly insulated; they don’t just have reserves, they have ample reserves within the system and for the wall street/CEO crowd, golden parachutes guaranteed by contract if their firm decides to “go in a different direction.” The lower and middle classes may be able to weather a few months if they were frugally saving, but they don’t have years of wealth to draw on.Report
I enjoy your writing, Mr. Kelly, and I’m sure I’m not alone.Report
And Ambrose Bierce’s version:
One day in winter a hungry Grasshopper applied to an Ant for some of the food which they had stored.
“Why,” said the Ant, “did you not store up some food for yourself, instead of singing all the time?”
“So I did,” said the Grasshopper; “so I did; but you fellows broke in and carried it all away.”Report
This is an amazing one, yes.
One thing that I’ve been wanting to bring up for a while but was working on how to word is is that there *ARE* ways to increase inequality by screwing people over, by stealing from them, by gamesmanship, by playing the refs, by all sorts of things… AND THAT ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE BAD AND IF THERE IS A MORALITY THEN THESE THINGS ARE PROBABLY ALSO MORALLY WRONG.
There are a handful of ways that we should deal with the above acts (and I’m probably more extreme in some of my thoughts on how folks who do such things ought to be dealt with than most because mine include such things as “public hanging”) but that gets us into some places where I, at least, didn’t want to go because it would stop talking about inequality (and do you really want to see another set of comments from me talking about regulatory capture?) and, as such, I’m probably not going to go down that particular path…
But I did want to say that there are legion ways to get ahead by screwing over your neighbor and that those ways are wrong. I mean, yeah, we all know that we all know this… but, much like “I love you”, it’s nice to hear it from time to time even if you do know it.Report
I am about to submit my entry into the Symposium. I wrote the first a few days ago, but decided against submission. There was a bit in there that didn’t make it into the second one that I am submitting and your closing reminded me of it:
Report
Dude. You fishing nailed this. Hilarious and piquant.
(How’d you get away without that italicized hoo-ha at the front?)Report
How many people who think that this is awesome thought that Sarah Palin’s crosshairs ad was beyond the pale?Report
That was… interesting.Report
I think this was a reference to the fate of the cricket.
To answer Brandon’s question, I don’t actually recall the release of canned outrage about the crosshairs here at the League. I do remember having to avoid OTB for a few days after the incident.Report
WillT, you are not a potted plant.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/06/%E2%80%9Cim-not-a-potted-plant-im-here-as-the-blogger-thats-my-job-%E2%80%9D/Report
Looking back at the threads at the time, you’re right—there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of the manufactured outrage that I was seeing from the left elsewhere. I apologize for assuming otherwise.
That said, I do take a pretty dim view of the “You’d better agree to more redistribution or there will be blood” argument.Report
I was a little afraid it was going there, but then I read the last bit.Report
Brandon, I don’t think Will was makin a threat, but an observation about how the world just might work.
Kind of like warning a college girl to be careful at a party–you’re not threatening to rape her, but just reminding her that there are in fact guys who will.Report
Well, you can take that as a threat, which I assume it wasn’t meant to be. Or you can just take it as a historical observation.
Sometimes you get blood; sometimes you get something like the New Deal. I prefer the latter, but YMMV.
A broad, prosperous, middle-class like what emerged post WWII is, historically, an anomaly. The more normal pattern has been a tiny, very wealthy, elite at the top, a middle layer of merchants and professionals comprising maybe 10% or so, and the vast unwashed masses living at or near poverty. So it very well may be the case that we’re witnessing the normal settling back into that normal pattern. But don’t expect people to be satisfied with that.Report
With all due respect, BB, if that is the message you believe I had meant this fable to have then that was the message you were looking for.Report
Grasshoppers live 2 months, die before winter, then the ants eat them. Queen ants live 20 or 30 years, and turn the raw material their soldier ants gather into consumable food, warmth and prosperity for all.
One day, the soldier ants all got together and said to each other, “We do all the work, die after a couple months, and the Queen just sits there and lives for like freaking ever!”
So they killed the Queen and tried to eat her but they couldn’t because their bodies lacked the needed enzymes to properly digest her ant flesh. So they all died too. But it was fair and equal because they were all dead, so that was cool.
A grasshopper passing by saw the ruins of the anthill. He was about to write a post about it, but he got eaten by a bird. The end.
By TomReport
Space awesomeReport
Cheers, bro. Dunno if EO Wilson would approve or Aesop either but what the hell.Report
Love it.Report
What happened to the bird?!Report
The Bird Lives.Report
Abides.Report
“God creates dinosaur. God kills dinosaur. God creates man. Man creates dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur eats man. Woman inherits the Earth…”Report
Do “The Little Red Hen” next!
I often use that one with my students (the one where the Hen keeps all the bread for herself) and ask them if they thought the ending was “fair”. It is interesting to see the variety of responses. My favorite was from one very astute girl, who looked at the illustrations and noticed that the Hen had a big belly (as chickens/hens often tend to when represented in cartoons). She said, “The Hen has a big belly. She probably needed all that bread to fill her up.” I opted not to point out that now the dog, the cat, and the mouse might be on the hook for her diabetes medication.Report
In the context of other fables, such Zeus and the Ant, (Perry 166) show Aesop did not intend the Ant to be any symbol of thrift and virtue:
ZEUS AND THE ANT
Long ago, the creature who is today an ant used to be a man who was always busy farming. Still, he was not satisfied with the results of his own labour, so he would steal from his neighbours’ crops. Zeus became angry at his greedy behaviour and turned him into the animal that now has the name of ‘ant.’ Yet even though the man changed his shape, he did not change his habits, and even now he goes around the fields gathering the fruits of other people’s labour, storing them up for himself.
The fable shows that when someone with a wicked nature changes his appearance, his behaviour remains the same.
Aesop does have other fables showing prodigality, The Boy and the Swallow, Perry 169 but he also preaches against miserliness in Perry 225
The fable isn’t about crickets or grasshoppers. In Aesop, it’s about cicadas, which don’t appear every year. When they do, they die in great numbers. Before we can extract meaning from fables, these little details become important. The Ant is a miserly thief, not frugal. Ants don’t plant the grain they store. But cicadas are singers. The old heroes are compared to them.Report
Uncle Tod-
Can the next story have a monkey? I like monkeys.Report
And James Joyce’s version:
The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant
of his joyicity, (he had a partner pair of findlestilts to supplant
him), or, if not, he was always making ungraceful overtures to
Floh and Luse and Bienie and Vespatilla to play pupa-pupa and
pulicy-pulicy and langtennas and pushpygyddyum and to com-
mence insects with him, there mouthparts to his orefice and his
gambills to there airy processes, even if only in chaste, ameng
the everlistings, behold a waspering pot. He would of curse
melissciously, by his fore feelhers, flexors, contractors, depres-
sors and extensors, lamely, harry me, marry me, bury me, bind
me, till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spin-
ner’s housery at the earthsbest schoppinhour so summery as his
cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped
up. Or, if he was always striking up funny funereels with Bester-
farther Zeuts, the Aged One, With all his wigeared corollas, albe-
dinous and oldbuoyant, inscythe his elytrical wormcasket and
Dehlia and Peonia, his druping nymphs, bewheedling him, com-
pound eyes on hornitosehead, and Auld Letty Plussiboots to
scratch his cacumen and cackle his tramsitus, diva deborah (seven
bolls of sapo, a lick of lime, two spurts of fussfor, threefurts of
sulph, a shake o’shouker, doze grains of migniss and a mesfull of
midcap pitchies. The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the
whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!),
and with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggs-
hill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retrophoebia, beck from
bulk, like fantastic disossed and jenny aprils, to the ra, the ra, the
ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a
mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and a myrmidins of
pszozlers pszinging Satyr’s Caudledayed Nice and Hombly,
Dombly Sod We Awhile but Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake! For if
sciencium (what’s what) can mute uns nought, ‘a thought,
abought the Great Sommboddy within the Omniboss, perhops an
artsaccord (hoot’s hoot) might sing ums tumtim abutt the Little
Newbuddies that ring his panch. A high old tide for the bar-
heated publics and the whole day as gratiis! Fudder and lighting
for ally looty, any filly in a fog, for O’Cronione lags acrumbling
in his sands but his sunsunsuns still tumble on. Erething above
ground, as his Book of Breathings bed him, so as everwhy, sham
or shunner, zeemliangly to kick time.
Grouscious me and scarab my sahul! What a bagateller it is!
Libelulous! Inzanzarity! Pou! Pschla! Ptuh! What a zeit for the
goths! vented the Ondt, who, not being a sommerfool, was
thothfolly making chilly spaces at hisphex affront of the icinglass
of his windhame, which was cold antitopically Nixnixundnix.
We shall not come to party at that lopp’s, he decided possibly,
for he is not on our social list. Nor to Ba’s berial nether, thon
sloghard, this oldeborre’s yaar ablong as there’s a khul on a khat.
Nefersenless, when he had safely looked up his ovipository, he
loftet hails and prayed: May he me no voida water! Seekit Ha-
tup! May no he me tile pig shed on! Suckit Hotup! As broad as
Beppy’s realm shall flourish my reign shall flourish! As high as
Heppy’s hevn shall flurrish my haine shall hurrish! Shall grow,
shall flourish! Shall hurrish! Hummum.
The Ondt was a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied,
bynear saw altitudinous wee a schelling in kopfers. He was sair
sair sullemn and chairmanlooking when he was not making spaces
in his psyche, but, laus! when he wore making spaces on his ikey,
he ware mouche mothst secred and muravyingly wisechairman-
looking. Now whim the sillybilly of a Gracehoper had jingled
through a jungle of love and debts and jangled through a jumble
of life in doubts afterworse, wetting with the bimblebeaks, drik-
king with nautonects, bilking with durrydunglecks and horing
after ladybirdies (ichnehmon diagelegenaitoikon) he fell joust as
sieck as a sexton and tantoo pooveroo quant a churchprince, and
wheer the midges to wend hemsylph or vosch to sirch for grub
for his corapusse or to find a hospes, alick, he wist gnit! Bruko
dry! fuko spint! Sultamont osa bare! And volomundo osi vide-
vide! Nichtsnichtsundnichts! Not one pickopeck of muscow-
money to bag a tittlebits of beebread! Iomio! Iomio! Crick’s
corbicule, which a plight! O moy Bog, he contrited with melan-
ctholy. Meblizzered, him sluggered! I am heartily hungry!
He had eaten all the whilepaper, swallowed the lustres, de-
voured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas and
seccles, ronged the records, made mundballs of the ephemerids
and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the
ternitary ? not too dusty a cicada of neutriment for a chittinous
chip so mitey. But when Chrysalmas was on the bare branches,
off he went from Tingsomingenting. He took a round stroll and
he took a stroll round and he took a round strollagain till the
grillies in his head and the leivnits in his hair made him thought
he had the Tossmania. Had he twicycled the sees of the deed
and trestraversed their revermer? Was he come to hevre with his
engiles or gone to hull with the poop? The June snows was
flocking in thuckflues on the hegelstomes, millipeeds of it and
myriopoods, and a lugly whizzling tournedos, the Boraborayel-
lers, blohablasting tegolhuts up to tetties and ruching sleets off
the coppeehouses, playing ragnowrock rignewreck, with an irri-
tant, penetrant, siphonopterous spuk. Grausssssss! Opr!
Grausssssss! Opr!
The Gracehoper who, though blind as batflea, yet knew, not
a leetle beetle, his good smetterling of entymology asped niss-
unitimost lous nor liceens but promptly tossed himself in the
vico, phthin and phthir, on top of his buzzer, tezzily wondering
wheer would his aluck alight or boss of both appease and the
next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt after this they
have met themselves, these mouschical umsummables, it shall be
motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents. Behailed
His Gross the Ondt, prostrandvorous upon his dhrone, in his
Papylonian babooshkees, smolking a spatial brunt of Hosana
cigals, with unshrinkables farfalling from his unthinkables,
swarming of himself in his sunnyroom, sated before his com-
fortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o’monkynous and a confucion
of minthe (for he was a conformed aceticist and aristotaller), as
appi as a oneysucker or a baskerboy on the Libido, with Floh
biting his leg thigh and Luse lugging his luff leg and Bieni bussing
him under his bonnet and Vespatilla blowing cosy fond tutties
up the allabroad length of the large of his smalls. As entomate
as intimate could pinchably be. Emmet and demmet and be jiltses
crazed and be jadeses whipt! schneezed the Gracehoper, aguepe
with ptchjelasys and at his wittol’s indts, what have eyeforsight!
The Ondt, that true and perfect host, a spiter aspinne, was
making the greatest spass a body could with his queens lace-
swinging for he was spizzing all over him like thingsumanything
in formicolation, boundlessly blissfilled in an allallahbath of
houris. He was ameising himself hugely at crabround and mary-
pose, chasing Floh out of charity and tickling Luse, I hope too,
and tackling Bienie, faith, as well, and jucking Vespatilla jukely
by the chimiche. Never did Dorsan from Dunshanagan dance it
with more devilry! The veripatetic imago of the impossible
Gracehoper on his odderkop in the myre, after his thrice ephe-
meral journeeys, sans mantis ne shooshooe, featherweighed
animule, actually and presumptuably sinctifying chronic’s de-
spair, was sufficiently and probably coocoo much for his chorous
of gravitates. Let him be Artalone the Weeps with his parisites
peeling off him I’ll be Highfee the Crackasider. Flunkey Footle
furloughed foul, writing off his phoney, but Conte Carme makes
the melody that mints the money. Ad majorem l.s.d.! Divi gloriam.
A darkener of the threshold. Haru? Orimis, capsizer of his ant-
boat, sekketh rede from Evil-it-is, lord of loaves in Amongded.
Be it! So be it! Thou-who-thou-art, the fleet-as-spindhrift,
impfang thee of mine wideheight. Haru!
The thing pleased him andt, and andt,
He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses
The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces.
I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping,
For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping.
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show Bienie where’s sweet
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat.
As I once played the piper I must now pay the count
So saida to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount!
Let who likes lump above so what flies be a full ‘un;
I could not feel moregruggy if this was prompollen.
I pick up your reproof, the horsegift of a friend,
For the prize of your save is the price of my spend.
Can castwhores pulladeftkiss if oldpollocks forsake ’em
Or Culex feel etchy if Pulex don’t wake him?
A locus to loue, a term it t’embarass,
These twain are the twins that tick Homo Vulgaris.
Has Aquileone nort winged to go syf
Since the Gwyfyn we were in his farrest drewbryf
And that Accident Man not beseeked where his story ends
Since longsephyring sighs sought heartseast for their orience?
We are Wastenot with Want, precondamned, two and true,
Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue.
Ere those gidflirts now gadding you quit your mocks for my gropes
An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes,
Of my tectucs takestock, tinktact, and ail’s weal;
As I view by your farlook hale yourself to my heal.
Partiprise my thinwhins whiles my blink points unbroken on
Your whole’s whercabroads with Tout’s trightyright token on.
My in risible universe youdly haud find
Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind.
Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense,
(May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!),
Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime!
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?
In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holo-
caust. Allmen.Report
I always preferred the original version.Report
I have the same thing with Finnegans Wake you have with Shakespeare. At first it’s just nonsense, but after a few minutes, it starts to make sense. (Though after I put the book down, I’m not talking like that.)Report