Editing Dragonfly (section)

=== In poetry and literature ===

[[Lafcadio Hearn]] wrote in his 1901 book ''A Japanese Miscellany''  that Japanese poets had created dragonfly ''haiku'' "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn."<ref name="Waldbauer2009"/> The poet [[Matsuo Bashō]] (1644–1694) wrote ''haiku'' such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly.<ref name="MitchellLasswell2005">{{cite book |last1=Mitchell |first1=Forrest Lee |last2=Lasswell |first2=James |title=A Dazzle Of Dragonflies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C6g_0ibafjcC&pg=PA36 |year=2005 |publisher=Texas A&M University Press |isbn=978-1-58544-459-5 |page=36}}</ref> [[Hori Bakusui]] (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly."<ref name="Waldbauer2009">{{cite book |last1=Waldbauer |first1=Gilbert |title=A Walk around the Pond: insects in and over the water |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P3vFM3-52i0C&pg=PA247 |date=30 June 2009 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-04477-7 |page=247}}</ref>

The poet [[Lord Tennyson]], described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "[[sapphire]] [[chain mail|mail]]" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail."<ref name="Tennyson2013">{{cite book |last=Tennyson |first=Alfred, Lord |title=Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eWcbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT545 |date=17 November 2013 |publisher=Delphi Classics |isbn=978-1-909496-24-8 |pages=544–545}}</ref>

The novelist [[H. E. Bates]] described the rapid, agile flight of dragonflies in his 1937 nonfiction book<ref>{{cite web|title=Down the River|url=https://hebates.com/library/down-the-river|url-status=live|access-date=9 September 2021|website=H. E. Bates official author website|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210909102501/https://hebates.com/library/down-the-river |archive-date=2021-09-09 }}</ref> ''Down the River'':{{sfn|Powell|1999|page=7}}

{{Quote|I saw, once, an endless procession, just over an area of water-lilies, of small sapphire dragonflies, a continuous play of blue gauze over the snowy flowers above the sun-glassy water. It was all confined, in true dragonfly fashion, to one small space. It was a continuous turning and returning, an endless darting, poising, striking and hovering, so swift that it was often lost in sunlight.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Bates |first1=H. E. |title=Country Life: Pike and Dragonflies |magazine=The Spectator |date=12 February 1937 |issue=5668 |page=269 (online p. 17) |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/12th-february-1937/17/country-life}}</ref>}}