Lilliput Levee :: :: University of Virginia Library

It was an oldwife in Buckinghamshire,
She gossiped with Madge by a blazing fire,
While the Cricket sang loud and clear;
His chirrup was glad, his chirrup was strong,
But the spiteful oldwife she misliked the song,
As it beat on the drum of her ear.

II

‘O ho, Master Cricket!’ quoth she, ‘I trow
'Tis in vain that I speak while ye chirrup so,
And Madge heareth naught that I say;
I would ye might silence your horrible croak!’
But the Cricket struck up a new tune as she spoke—
For why? 'twas his sister's birth-day.

III

So he sang out as loud and as clear as a bell,
While the oldwife was fain her gossip to tell,
When the Kettle chimed merrily in;
And, as loud waxed the harmony made by them both,
The baffled old gossip, in terrible wrath,
Resolved on a terrible sin!

IV

She peered down the crevice, with spectacled face,
That led to Cricket his hiding place;
The old church clock struck One!
She lifts the great kettle aloft in the air;
Down flows the hot stream—he was scalded there,
The song of poor Cricket was done!

V

Right glad was our gossip, whose clack was free,
And to Madge she finished her history,
Triúmphing o'er Cricket his end;
But Heaven above, with an angry eye,
Had seen the innocent creature die,
And a punishment soon did send.

VI

Next day she was talking, as she did use,
To Madge, and a-sudden, while telling the news,
‘Lackaday! I'm struck deaf!’ she cried—
So she was; and she lived and died deaf as a post,
Save every night, when Cricket his Ghost
Came chirping to her bedside!

Good children all, from this history,
Learn that kind Heaven delights to see
Its creatures great and small
Live happy, and punishes whoso deprives
Even chirruping crickets of innocent lives
For no good reason at all.