On the grassy bank Some ruminating lie; while others stand Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip The circling surface. In the middle droops The strong, laborious ox, of honest front, Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides The troublous insects lashes with his tail, Returning still. Amid his subjects safe Slumbers the monarch swain; his careless arm Thrown round his head on downy moss sustained, Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands filled, There, listening every noise, his watchful dog. Thomson. Notwithstanding the heat has parched the songsters of the grove into silence, there is still an audible music in nature— The gnats Their murmuring small trumpets sounden wide. Spenser. And John Keats points to another source of melody— 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. The insect tribe, however, are peculiarly active and vigorous in the hottest weather. These minute creatures are, for the most part, annual, being hatched in the Spring, and dying at the approach of Winter: they have therefore no time to lose in indolence, but must make the most of their short existence; especially as their most perfect state continues only during a part of their lives. How appropriately may Anacreon’s celebrated address to the Cicada be applied to many of the happy creatures which sport in the sunshine— Blissful insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s sweetest wine; Nature waits upon thee still, And thy fragrant cup does fill, All the fields that thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee; All that Summer hours produce, Fertile made with ripening juice; Man for thee does sow and plough, Farmer he, and landlord thou! Thee the hinds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year! To thee alone of all the earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth: Happy creature! happy thou, Dost neither age nor winter know, But when thou’st drank, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flow’ry leaves among, Sated with the glorious feast, Thou retir’st to endless rest.