242 The Poets and Nature. 



end of its purpose. Nature has no further need for it, and 

 does not care whether it dies or not. 



The slender fragility of the insect's appearance may have 

 suggested a feeble hold of life ; some grasshoppers look like 

 the mere spectres of insects. About others too there is a 

 vegetable, perishable look, as of thin grass-blades that a 

 frost would kill or heat shrivel up ; a suspicion about their 

 sere and faded edges that they are already beginning to 

 wither. But the grasshopper has nothing to complain of as 

 to its length of life. It sings the summer in and the autumn 

 out, and goes to sleep with the year. 



The cricket, the Pau-puk-keena of Hiawatha, " shrill and 

 ceaseless," differs but little from the grasshopper : 



" Beside yon pool as smooth as glass, 



Reflecting every cloud, 

 Securely hid among the grass, 

 The crickets chirrup loud." Clare. 



And again, in Clare 



" In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be, 



Where all the noises that on peace intrude 

 Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, 

 Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude." 



As a matter of fact this insect is, I fancy, only the grass- 

 hopper over again (Keats goes afield to hear the " dappled " 

 cricket), but used under another name for the sake of variety, 

 for it not only "pipes," sings, "chirps," and (in Clare) 

 "chitters and twitters" o'er its dreams, and (in Leyden) 

 even " pitters," exactly like the grasshopper, but has all other 

 points in common with it; and besides there is no very 

 common out-of-doors cricket in England. Shenstone de- 

 scribes its voice as "tinkling," and Cowper calls it a 

 " locust" in his appeal to the swallow : 



"Attic maid ! with honey fed, 



Bearest thou to thy callow brood 

 Yonder locust from the mead, 

 Destined their delicious food ? 



