The Ant and the Grasshopper

2-3 min read
7 pages

The ant and the grasshopper, Aesop's fable to read aloud. All summer he plays and she carries — and then the first cold morning comes.

All summer long the grasshopper sat on a warm flat stone and played, and he played well. The meadow liked to hear him, and he liked being heard, and the days went on and on and did not seem to end.

The ant came past him on the path below, carrying a grain of wheat that was bigger than her own head. An hour later she came past again with another one, and an hour after that with a third.

«Sit down a minute,» the grasshopper called down to her. «Listen to this part. It's new.» «I can't,» said the ant, without stopping. «Winter.» «Winter is miles away,» said the grasshopper, and he played the new part anyway, to the meadow.

She went past him in July, and in August, and in the first week of September, and every single time she was carrying something, and every single time he asked her to sit down and listen.

Then one morning the meadow was white round the edges. The flat stone was cold to sit on. The grass he lived on had gone brown and sharp, and there was nothing on it any more that was worth eating.

He walked a long way, which grasshoppers are not built for, and came at last to the ants' door in the side of the bank, where the ground was warm enough that the frost stopped a hand's width short of it.

The ant was inside with the wheat stacked up to the ceiling. She gave him a seed and a place by the wall out of the draught, and she did not say one word about the summer — she did not need to. He had walked all morning through the frost, and he had worked it out himself on the way.

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Text source: Fable by Aesop (6th century BC), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Where «The Ant and the Grasshopper» comes from and who wrote it down

The Ant and the Grasshopper

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