(Voluptuous and wise withal, Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest. After Anacreon, by Abraham Cowley [1618-1667] ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET THE poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost, The Grasshopper's among the grassy hills. John Keats [1795-1821] TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass, The Cricket 1511 Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong Leigh Hunt [1784-1859] THE CRICKET LITTLE inmate, full of mirth, Thus thy praise shall be expressed, While the rat is on the scout, And the mouse with curious snout, Thou hast all thy heart's desire. Though in voice and shape they be Neither night nor dawn of day Wretched man, whose years are spent · Lives not, agèd though he be, Half a span, compared with thee. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, TO A CRICKET VOICE of summer, keen and shrill, For thy song with summer's filled- Bringing scents of new-mown hay, William Cox Bennett (1820-1895] TO AN INSECT I LOVE to hear thine earnest voice, Wherever thou art hid, Thou testy little dogmatist, Thou pretty Katydid! Thou mindest me of gentlefolks, Old gentlefolks are they,-Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way. Thou art a female, Katydid! I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes, To an Insect I think there is a knot of you Oh, tell me where did Katy live, And was she very fair and young, I warrant Katy did no more Dear me! I'll tell you all about And Ann, with whom I used to walk And all that tore their locks of black, Ah no! the living oak shall crash, The rock shall rend its mossy base Before the little Katydid Shall add one word, to tell The mystic story of the maid Whose name she knows so well. Peace to the ever-murmuring race! And when the latest one Shall fold in death her feeble wings Beneath the autumn sun, Then shall she raise her fainting voice, And lift her drooping lid, And then the child of future years Shall hear what Katy did. 1513 Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE SNAIL To grass, or leaf, or fruit, or wall, Together. Within that house secure he hides, Give but his horns the slightest touch, He shrinks into his house with much Where'er he dwells, he dwells alone, Whole treasure. Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads, The faster. Who seeks him must be worse than blind If, finding it, he fails to find Its master. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, by William Cowper [1731-1800] THE HOUSEKEEPER THE frugal snail, with forecast of repose, Carries his house with him where'er he goes; Peeps out, and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile amain. |