C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Grasshopper

From ‘A New-Year’s Masque, and Other Poems’

SHUTTLE of the sunburnt grass,

Fifer in the dun cuirass,

Fifing shrilly in the morn,

Shrilly still at eve unworn;

Now to rear, now in the van,

Gayest of the elfin clan:

Though I watch their rustling flight,

I can never guess aright

Where their lodging-places are:

’Mid some daisy’s golden star,

Or beneath a roofing leaf,

Or in fringes of a sheaf,

Tenanted as soon as bound!

Loud thy reveille doth sound.

When the earth is laid asleep,

And her dreams are passing deep,

On mid-August afternoons;

And through all the harvest moons,

Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace,—

Thy gainsaying doth not cease.

When the frost comes thou art dead:

We along the stubble tread,

On blue, frozen morns, and note

No least murmur is afloat;

Wondrous still our fields are then,

Fifer of the elfin men.