Three Hundred Æsop's Fables/The Ants and the Grasshopper

For other English-language translations of this work, see The Ants and the Grasshopper.

THE ANTS AND THE GRASSHOPPER.

The Ants were employing a fine winter's day in drying grain collected in the summer time. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants enquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?" He replied, "I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing." They then said in derision: "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter."