ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET

JOHN KEATS

THE poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the Grasshopper's - he takes the lead
In summer luxury, - he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The Grasshoppers among some grassy hills.

ROBIN HOOD

To a Friend

JOHN KEATS

O, the bugle sounds no more,

N%

And the twanging bow no more; Silent is the ivory shrill

Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amazed to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

But

On the fairest time of June

You may go, with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you; you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile To fair hostess Merriment, Down beside the pasture Trent; For he left the merry tale, Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn.

Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe;
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his tufted grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,

She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dock-yard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her-strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

So it is; yet let us sing Honour to the old bow-string! Honour to the bugle-horn! Honour to the woods unshorn! Honour to the Lincoln green! Honour to the archer keen! Honour to tight Little John, And the horse he rode upon! Honour to bold Robin Hood Sleeping in the underwood: Honour to Maid Marian,

And to all the Sherwood clan!

Though their days have hurried by,

Let us two a burden try.

NOVEMBER

HARTLEY COLERIDGE

HE mellow year is hasting to its close;

TH

The little birds have almost sung their last, Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast — That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows; The patient beauty of the scentless rose, Oft with the moon's hoar crystal quaintly glass'd, Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past, And makes a little summer where it grows: In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day The dusky waters shudder as they shine, The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define, And the gaunt woods, in ragged scant array, Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy twine.

THE PARROT A TRUE STORY

A

THOMAS CAMPBELL

PARROT, from the Spanish main,

Full young and early caged came o'er, With bright wings, to the bleak domain Of Mulla's shore.

To spicy groves where he had won

His plumage of resplendent hue,
His native fruits, and skies, and sun,
He bade adieu.

For these he changed the smoke of turf,
A heathery land and misty sky,
And turned on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.

But, petted in our climate cold,

He lived and chattered many a day : Until with age, from green and gold, His wings grew gray.

At last, when, blind and seeming dumb, He scolded, laugh'd, and spoke no more, A Spanish stranger chanced to come

To Mulla's shore;