A HOPPERGRASS, one sunny day,
Turning hand-springs amid the hay,
O’erleaped himself, and fell into
A piggin of good apple brew.

“Shame on you, thirsty little one,”
Cried the haymakers in the sun;
The hopper took one draught, and then,
Ere he flew off, addressed the men:

“Good sirs,” quoth he, “although one swallow
Does not make summer, it would follow
That several swallows were at fault
If you had made that summersault.”

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 823, 6 August 1895, 808.