On Listening to a Cricket

I love, thou little chirping thing,
To hear thy melancholy noise;
Though thou to Fancy's ear may sing
Of summer past and fading joys.

Thou canst not now drink dew from flowers,
Nor sport along the traveller's path;
But, through the winter's weary hours,
Shalt warm thee at my lonely hearth.

And when my lamp's decaying beam
But dimly shows the lettered page
Rich with some ancient poet's dream,
Or wisdom of a purer age —

Then will I listen to the sound,
And, musing o'er the embers pale
With whitening ashes strewed around,
The forms of memory unveil;

Recall the many-colored dreams
That fancy fondly weaves for youth
When all the bright illusion seems
The pictured promises of Truth;

Perchance observe the fitful light,
And its faint flashes round the room,
And think some pleasures feebly bright
May lighten thus life's varied gloom.

I love the quiet midnight hour,
When Care and Hope and Passion sleep,
And Reason with untroubled power
Can her late vigils duly keep.

I love the night; and sooth to say,
Before the merry birds that sing
In all the glare and noise of day,
Prefer the cricket's grating wing.