Insects

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <p id="id00549" style="margin-top: 2em"><i>Insects</i></p> <p id="id00550">These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,<br/> And happy units of a numerous herd<br/> Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,<br/> Mocking the sunshine in their glittering wings,<br/> How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!<br/> No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,<br/> Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;<br/> And where they fly for dinner no one knows—<br/> The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine<br/> Of noon, whose sun may bring them golden wine.<br/> All day they're playing in their Sunday dress—<br/> Till night goes sleep, and they can do no less;<br/> Then, to the heath bell's silken hood they fly,<br/> And like to princes in their slumbers lie,<br/> Secure from night, and dropping dews, and all,<br/> In silken beds and roomy painted hall.<br/> So merrily they spend their summer day,<br/> Now in the cornfields, now the new-mown hay.<br/> One almost fancies that such happy things,<br/> With coloured hoods and richly burnished wings,<br/> Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade<br/> Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid,<br/> Keeping their merry pranks a mystery still,<br/> Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />