Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

In some places, cicadas are called locusts, although they are different species. Here’s how Walt Whitman described them on August 22, 1876 in “Locusts and Katydids” collected into his book, Specimen Days:

Aug. 22.—Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid—I hear the latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought the morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just a much pleasure.  A single locust is not heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then fluttering, quietly tapering fall.  Each strain is continued from one to two minutes.  The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene—gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old wine, not sweet, but far better than sweet.

            But the katydid—how shall I describe its piquant utterances?  One sings from a willow-tree just outside my open bedroom window, twenty yards distant; every clear night for a fortnight past has sooth’d me to sleep.  I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads—very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree.

            Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching appoint of great energy and significance, and then quicky and gracefully dropping down and out.  Not the melody of the singing-bird—are from it; the common musician might think without melody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own; monotonous—but what a swing there is in that brassy drone, round and round, cymbaline—or like the whirling of brass quoits.