The dear voice of the summer night

Sings in my listening ear

A melody of joyous flight,

In sweetest cadence here.

I love the cricket’s monotone;

It almost seems to me

That star-notes, through the ether blown,

Have lodged in grass and tree.

A beetle, swinging down the field,

Booms on the lighted pane;

And, as it strikes, a thought revealed

Taps at my quivering brain.

The “peas and pork” bird in the air—

The solemn whip-poor-will—

Both thoughts of quaintest mystery bear

From off yon shadowed hill.

A silk-worm moth, with purple “eyes”

Upon its nether wings,

Around the lighted window flies,

Or to the casement clings.

So, all the eve, the gathering gloom

Speaks with its voices low;

Hearts unto hearts, in bits of bloom,

On summer evenings flow.

—Willis Edwin Hurd.