The Droning Beetle

No one I know of my generation recalls a certain beetle that used to fly at night. I don't know what the beetle is called but I know it was big and it flew in a straight line and it made a loud buzzing or droning sound. Sometimes it would fly quite close to one's head and it was, as a kid, quite disconcerting if not alarming. I had the feeling that it was not going to divert from its straight line of flight and that if my head happened to be in the way, it wouldn't worry too much about it.
My wife does not recall ever seeing (I never saw one either, just heard them) or hearing one of those beetles. I told her I wasn't making it up and that it's mentioined in a famous poem.... whose title I couldn't recall.
Then, today, on The Daily Express website which has a "Forgotten Poem" section I came across it: Gray's "Elegy written in a country churchyard". Of course: one of my favourite poems.

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plow-man homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering lndscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds....."