The First Cricket

Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning,
And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay, --
Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining,
All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay?

Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber,
Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan,
Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost cumber,
And in the year's lost youth makest me still lose my own.