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Cricket Poetry

The Coming of Autumn
In: Kokin-shû

Anonymous


Not for my sake alone, I know, 
is the coming of autumn;- 
Yet hearing the insects sing, 
At once my heart grows sad.

Ode to Autumn - Excerpt
John Keats


Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Abruptly
Denise Levertov


The last warm day, I caught, 
almost unnoticing,
      that high shrilling like thin
wires of spun silver, glint
of wheeling flight - some small tribe
leaving.
                     That night
the moon was full; by morning
autumn had come.

untitled
Aram Saroyan (submitted by Erik Schurink)


crickets
crickess
cricksss
cricssss
crisssss
crssssss
csssssss
ssssssss
ssssssts
sssssets
sssskets
sssckets
ssickets
srickets
crickets

Cricket - Excerpt
William Cowper


Little inmate, full of mirth,
Chirping on my kitchen hearth,
Wheresoe'er be thy abode
Always harbinger of good:
Pay we for thy warm retreat 
With a song more soft and sweet;
In return thou shalt receive
Such a strain as I can give

Let Evening Come
Jane Kenyon


Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Summer Haiku
Leonard Cohen


Silence
And a deeper silence
When the crickets hesitate
   

The Cottager to Her Infant
William Wordsworth


THE days are cold, the nights are long,
The north-wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
  Save thee, my pretty Love!

The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
There's nothing stirring in the house
Save one 'wee', hungry, nibbling mouse,
  Then why so busy thou?                         

Nay! start not at that sparkling light;
'Tis but the moon that shines so bright
On the window pane bedropped with rain:
Then, little Darling! sleep again,
  And wake when it is day.
                

Interior - Excerpt
Carl Sandburg


Out from the window ...prairielands. 
Moon mist whitens a golf ground. 
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry. 
The crickets keep on chirring. 
            

The Cricket Sang
Emily Dickinson


The cricket sang, 
And set the sun, 
And workmen finished, one by one, 
Their seam the day upon. 

The low grass loaded with the dew, 
The twilight stood as strangers do 
With hat in hand, polite and new, 
To stay as if, or go. 

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,-- 
A wisdom without face or name, 
A peace, as hemispheres at home,-- 
And so the night became. 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree - Excerpt
William Yeats


And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight 's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
                              

El Grillo
Josquin des Pres


El grillo
El grillo e buon cantore
che tiene longo verso
Dale, dale, beue, beue, grillo, grillo, canta, 
    canta Dale, dale, beue, beue, grillo, grillo, canta, canta
El grillo El grillo e buon cantore.
ma non fa come gli altri uccelli,
come li han cantato un poco,
van de fatto in altro loco,
sempre el grillo sta pur saldo.

El grillo
El grillo e buon cantore.
Quando la maggiore el caldo
alhor canta - sol per amore - sol per amore.
   

To A Cricket
William Bennett


Voice of summer , keen and shrill,
Chirping round my winter fire,
Of thy song I never tire,
Weary others as they will, 
For thy song with summers filled--
Filled with sunshine, filled with June;
Firelight echo of that noon
Heard in fields when all is stilled 
In the golden light of May,
Bringing scents of new-mown hay,
Bees, and birds, and flowers away,
Prithee, haunt my fireside still,
Voice of summer, keen and shrill.  

The Pipes of Pan - Excerpt
Bliss Carman


Pale tree-cricket with his bell
Ringing ceaselessly and well,
Sounding silver to the brass
Of his cousin in the grass.
       

Splinter
Carl Sandburg


The voice of the last cricket
across the first frost
is one kind of good-by.
It is so thin a splinter of singing.
             

The Book of Odes
Various Chinese Authors


"In the seventh month, in the fields;

In the eighth month, under the eaves;

In the ninth month, about the doors;

In the tenth month, the cricket goes under our beds.'' 
             

Poem of Luo Wei
Zhang Shi


From Dawn to dusk the weaving lady sings without break. 
Never yielding a single thread there is nothing to its name. 
The spider, in silence spins and weaves without break. 
The woven net catches the fly and provides food. 
The fruits of effort rather than sound cause me to heave a sigh.
             

Poem of Luo Wei
Tu Fu - Translated by J.P. Seaton


House cricket...
Trifling thing.
And yet how his mournful song moves us.
Out in the grass his cry was a tremble,
But now, he trills beneath our bed, to share his sorrow.
I lie still beside you, finding no release:
You, old wife, you suffer quiet through till dawn.
The song of ourselves may move us, restless,
Through long nights. The cricket's song of Autumn
Holds us still.             

Katydids are not Optional

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