260 The Poets and Nature. 



As far as the eye could reach into the water-logged forests, 

 and up in the air among the invisible branches of invisible 

 trees, flickered in inextricable bewilderment hosts of fire- 

 flies. The air was thick with them. And such flighty fitful 

 creatures as exasperated the intelligence, perpetually striking 

 matches as if to look for something, and then blowing them 

 out again, flick ! flick ! flick ! in countless millions ; and all 

 apparently desperate of any other purpose but to confound 

 confusion. The frogs sounded as the sand of the shore for 

 multitudes, and there were at least two katy-dids for every 

 frog ; and yet multiply the frogs by the katy-dids and you 

 would not get the total of the fireflies. It seemed as if 

 each "yank" and "katy-did" struck out fireflies just as 

 flint and steel strike flashes, or as if the recriminations of 

 batrachian and insect caught fire as they flew and peopled 

 the inflammable air with phosphorescent points of flame ; a 

 battery of din perpetually grinding out showers of sparks. 



In the poets, however, it flits, "a bright earth-wandering 

 star," " tall majestic trees between ; " it plays " around the 

 pillared stems," sparkles " in deep cedars " and " through 

 the brakes," lights up " forest bowers." But the " emerald " 

 light no longer serves, for " the fireflies' lanterns of green 

 light " now becomes as inaccurate as before it was correct. 

 Shelley repeats his glow-worm fancy in the lines 



" Carved lamps and chalices which shone, 

 In their own golden beams, each like a flower, 

 Out of whose depth a firefly shakes his light, 

 Under a cypress in a starless night." 



In another poem he has both insects together a license of 

 geography that entomology scarcely, I fancy, authorises. 



" Day had awakened all things that be 

 The lark, the thrush, and the swallow free ; 



Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, 

 Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, 

 Like lamps which a student forgets to trim ; 



