The Cricket

PIPER of the fields and woods
And the fragrant solitudes,
When the trees are stripped of leaves,
And the choked brook sobs and grieves;
When the golden-rod alone
Feigns the summer hath not flown;
Then while evening airs grow chill,
And the flocks upon the hill
Huddle in the waning light,
Thou, ere falls the frosty night,
To the kine that homeward pass
Pipest 'mid the stiffening grass.

Dark may dawn the winter days, —
Where thou art the summer stays ;
Though the ruffian north winds roar,
Lash the roof and smite the door,
Thou from hearths secure and warm
Laughest at the brewing storm,
And thy merry minstrelsy Sets the frozen fancy free.
Dost thou dream, 0 piper brave,
That from his sea-haunted grave
He who praised thy song of yore
Hath come back to hear once more,
Through high noons, thy strident strain
Borne o’er Enna’s saffron plain ?r
Long, long since the nectared hoard
That the yellow bees had stored
In the turf above his head
Hath, by many a passing tread
O’er the chamber of his sleep,
In the dust been trampled deep.

From his lentisk couch of rest,
In his shaggy goat-skin vest,
He shall rise no more to hear,
With the poet’s raptured ear,
O’er the thymy pastures swell
Morning sounds he loved so well.

Other skies are over us,
And afar Theocritus
Slumbers deep, O piper small,
And he will not heed at all
Though be struck thy shrillest notes,
Yet a voice like thine still floats
O’er him where thy shy kin be
’Mid the dews of Sicily.