Tell me, why the _Ant_ In _summer’s plenty thinks of winter’s want_? By constant journey _careful to prepare Her stores_, and _bringing home the corny ear_, By what instruction _does she bite the grain_? Lest, hid in earth, and taking root again, It might elude the foresight of her care.[503] Thus Watts, also: They don’t wear their time out in sleeping or play; But _gather up corn_ in a sunshiny day, And _for winter they lay up their stores_: They manage their work in such regular forms, One would think they _foresaw_ all the frosts and the storms, And so _brought their food within doors_.[504] And Smart: The _sage, industrious Ant_, the _wisest insect_, And _best economist_ of all the field: For when as yet the favorable sun Gives to the genial earth th’ enlivening ray, ----All her subterranean avenues, And storm-proof cells, with management most meet, And unexampled housewif’ry, she frames; Then to the field she hies, and _on her back Burden immense! brings home the cumbrous corn_: Then, many a weary step, and many a strain, And many a grievous groan subdued, at length Up the huge hill she hardly heaves it home; Nor rests she here her providence, but _nips With subtle tooth the grain_, lest from _her garner_, In mischievous fertility, it steal, And back to daylight vegetate its way.[505] Milton also entertained this erroneous opinion: First crept The _parsimonious Emmet, provident Of future_, in small room large heart inclos’d; Pattern of just equality perhaps Hereafter, join’d in her popular tribes Of commonalty.[506] And also Dr. Johnson: Turn on the _prudent Ant_ thy heedless eyes, Observe her labors, sluggard! and be wise. No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties or directs her choice; Yet _timely provident_ she hastes away, To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, _She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain_.[507] There is an old Eastern proverb, that “what the Ant _collects_ in a year the monks eat up in a night,” which seems to be founded on the supposition that the Ants provide themselves with stores of food. Juvenal, also, observes, in his Sixth Satire, that “after the example of the Ant, some have learned to _provide_ against cold and hunger.”[508]