When the stars was all a-tremble In the dreamin' fields o' blue, An' the daisy in the darkness-- Felt the fallin' o' the dew,-- There come a sound o' melody No mortal ever heard, An' all the birds seemed singin' From the throat o' one sweet bird! Then the other birds went Mayin' In a land too fur to call; For there warn't no use in stayin' When one bird could sing for all! FRANK L. STANTON THE MESSENGER Bee! tell me whence do you come? Ten fields away, twenty perhaps, Have heard your hum. If you are from the north, you may Have passed my mother's roof of straw Upon your way. If you came from the south you should Have seen another cottage just Inside the wood. And should you go back that way, please Carry a message to the house Among the trees. Say--I will wait her at the rock Beside the stream, this very night At eight o'clock. And ask your queen when you get home To send my queen the present of A honey-comb. JAMES STEPHENS FIREFLIES Fireflies, Fireflies, little glinting creatures, Making night lovely with a rain of gold, Born of the moonbeams, children all unearthly, Ah how you vanish from a look too bold! Fireflies, Fireflies, lovely as our dreams are, Sewn with such fancies from the years gone by, Wayward, elusive, as the playful zephyrs, Hiding mid grasses, gleaming in the sky. Fireflies, Fireflies, like unto the silent Brown nuns who gather for the dead to pray, As theirs your mission; holy, too, your tapers, Souls of dead flowers lighting on their way. ANTOINETTE DE COURSEY PATTERSON JULY MIDNIGHT Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees, Flicker in the lower branches, Skim along the ground. Over the moon-white lilies Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars. As you lean against me, Moon-white, The air all about you Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame Starting out of a background of great vague trees. AMY LOWELL THE CRICKET IN THE PATH She passed through the shadowy garden, so tall and so white, Her eyes on the stars and her face like an angel's upturned, And it seemed to my thought that the dusk round her head with the light Of an aureole burned. But where she had trodden unseeing, I found on the path A cricket, so frail that her light foot had maimed it, yet strong To valiantly pipe, tiny hero, a faint aftermath Of its yesterday song.