To A Cricket

Clamorous cricket in the wall.
Thus chirping as night's curtains fall,
I often think with wonder how such bare-boned,
tiny thing as thou.
In heated nooks within the mill
Can rasp thy song all night so shrill.
How oft at night I've sat alone
And heard thy sharppeculiar tone,
If as a tone I may define
That scraping, creaking chirp of thine
And listening while no other sound
Disturbed the loneliness around.
It fell upon my childish ears
As fairy whispers, 'wakening fears
Till ghosts of every shape and size
Seemed flitting 'fore my drowsy eyes.
But sitting, listening to thee now
With whiskered face and wrinkled brow,
I smile at childhood's simple ways
Where strolled its goblins, ghosts and fays
And think—though some may think me wrong,
There's music in a cricket's song.
Sing, little, merry, cricket, sing;
Let thy elytracases* ring
Because thy rasping song invites
My memory back to summer nights
And fireside myths, when I, a boy.
Had felt no grief and lived in joy.

(*The tiny horny or shell likewings of insects)