I cannot to the city go,
Where all in sound and sight,
Declares that nature does not know,
Or do a thing aright.
To granite wall, and tower, and dome
My heart could never cling;
Its simple strings are tied to home—
To where the crickets sing.
I 'm certain I was never made
To run a city race,
Along a human palisade,
That 's ever shifting place.
The bustle, fashion, art and show
Were each a weary thing;
Amid them, I should sigh to go
And hear the crickets sing.
If there, I might no longer be
Myself, as now I seem,
But lose my own identity,
And walk, as in a dream;
Or else, with din and crowd oppressed,
I 'd wish for sparrow's wing.
To fly away, and be at rest,
Where free the crickets sing.
The fire-fly, rising from the grass
A winged and living light,
I would not give for all the gas,
That spoils their city sight.
Not all the pomp and etiquette
Of citizen or king,
Shall make my rustic heart forget
The song, the crickets sing.
I find in hall and gallery,
Their figures tame and faint,
To my wild bird, and brook, and tree,
Without a touch of paint.
And from the sweetest instrument
Of pipe, or key, or string,
I 'd turn away, and feel content
To hear the crickets sing.
O! who could paint the placid moon,
That 's beaming through the bough
Of yon high elm, or play the tune,
That sounds beneath it now?
Not all the silver of the mine,
Nor human power could bring
Another moon like her to shine,
Or make a cricket sing.
I know that, when the crickets trill
Their plaintive strains by night,
They tell us that, from vale and hill,
The summer takes her flight.
And were there no renewing Power,
'T would be a mournful thing,
To think of fading leaf and flower;
And hear the crickets sing.
But, why should change with sadness dim
Our eye, when thought can range
Through time and space, and fly to him,
Who is without a change?
For he, who meted out the year,
Will give another spring:
He rolls at once the shining sphere,
And makes the cricket sing.
And when another autumn strips
The summer leaves away,
If cold and silent be the lips
That breathed and moved to-day,
The time I 've passed with nature's God
Will cause no spirit sting,
Though I 've adored him from the sod
Whereon the crickets sing.