Cricket

CHAPTER FOUR It was a beautiful day in late summer.

Tommy Grasshopper, Johnny Cricket, Willie Ladybug were playing on a high bank of the river and watching the little fish jumping after tiny flies and bugs that fell upon the surface of the stream.

Let's go higher so that we can see them better, Willie Ladybug said.

Yes, let's climb up the tall reed so that we can look right down in the water, Johnny Cricket said.

But we must be very careful not to fall for the fish would soon swallow us.

and that would not be very much fun, he laughed.

So Tommy Grasshopper and Johnny Cricket caught hold of Willie Ladybug's four little hands and helped him to climb up the tall reeds, for Willie was not as old as the other bug-boys and might fall in the water if they did not help him.

From the tall reeds the three bug-boys climbed could look down in the water and see the pretty little sunfish and the long, slim pickerel darting around and turning their sunny sides so that the sun would reflect its rays on them, just as if they were looking-glasses.

I don't, I don't remember this one.

[crickets chirping]

[gasps] Crickets.

What is this one? [drum beat]

Joke.

And it's really in the small bowel usually 'cause it's-

Crickets, beetles, or cockroaches.

Yep.

Yep.

In my Tennessee mountain home, life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh.

In my Tennessee mountain home, crickets sing in the fields nearby.

I remember sitting on the front porch on a summer afternoon In a straight-back chair on two legs leaned against the wall And I'd watch the kids a-playing with Junebugs on a string And chase the glowing fireflies when evening shadows fall In my Tennessee mountain home Life is peaceful as a baby's sigh In my Tennessee mountain home Crickets sing in the fields nearby Mmm Of

course now that was a typical day And I have a lot of songs that I grew up with in my childhood that I wrote after I was grown.

And a lot of people ask me, well, do you have a favorite song that you've written out of all those songs? I said, yeah, I do.

I grew up in that place, and then I created that place again.

But then the experience of having all these little eyes watching me from their cages, like, what are you doing to us? And having once a week going to PetSmart to get— Crickets, live crickets to feed the gecko.

And just the crickets staring at me

like,

To My Brothers by John Keats.

Read for LibriVox.org. small busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals and their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep like whispers of the household gods that keep a gentle empire o'er fraternal souls and while for rhymes i search around the poles your eyes are fixed as in poetic sleep upon the lore so voluble and deep that aye at fall of night our care condoles this is your birthday tom and i rejoice that thus it passes smoothly quietly many such eves of gently whispering noise may we together pass and calmly try what are this world's true joys ere the great voice from its fair face shall bid our spirits fly November 18, 1816 On the Grasshopper and Cricket by 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 the poetry of earth is ceasing never an alone winter evening when the frost has wrought a silence from the stove there shrills the crickets song in warmth increasing ever and seems to one in drowsiness half lost the grasshoppers among some grassy hills december thirtieth eighteen sixteen End of poem.

This recording is in the public domain.

high-mindedness a jealousy for good a loving kindness for the great man's fame dwells here and there with people of no name in noisome alley and in pathless wood and where we think the truth least understood oft may be found a singleness of aim that ought to frighten into hooded shame a money-mongering pitiable brood how glorious this affection for the cause of steadfast genius toiling gallantly what when a stout unbending champion awes envy and malice to their native sty unnumbered souls breathe out a still applause proud to behold him in his country's eye Addressed to the same by John Keats.