The cicada

O cicada, born with fine days,

Poised from dawn on the green branches,

Happy to drink a little dew,

And kinglike, you always sing.

Blameless to all, peaceful and without guile,

The happy worker, shaded by the oaktree,

Hears you in the distance heralding summer.

Apollo praises you as highly as the Muses,

And Zeus has given you immortality!

Hail, wise child of ancient earth,

Whose song invites eyes to close,

And who, beneath the intensity of the Attic sun,

Having neither flesh nor blood, live like the Gods.