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  Quel plaisir?  Prolonger sa veille,
  Regarder la flamme vermeille
  Prenant a deux bras le tison,
  A tous les bruits preter l’oreille,
  Entendre vivre la maison.

  Tapi dans sa niche bien chaude,
  Sentir l’hiver qui pleure et rode,
  Tout bleme, et le nez violet,
  Tachant de s’introduire en fraude
  Par quelque fente du volet!

This poem is especially picturesque, and is intended to give us the comfortable sensations of a winter night by the fire, and the amusement of watching the wood burn and of hearing the kettle boiling.  You will find that the French has a particular quality of lucid expression; it is full of clearness and colour.

“Blow on, cold wind! pour down, O rain.  I, in my soot-black palace, laugh at both rain and wind; and while waiting for winter to pass I remain in my corner by the fire dreaming.

“It is I that am really the spirit of the hearth!  The gaseous flame licks the wood more softly with its bluish tongue when it hears me; and the smoke rises up like an alabaster thread, and curls itself about (or twists) at the sound of my voice.

“The kettle chuckles and chatters; the golden-footed flame leaps, dancing to the accompaniment of my song (or in accompaniment to my song); the great log covers itself with down, the sap boils in the wooden embers ("duvet,” meaning “down,” refers to the soft fluffy white ash that forms upon the surface of burning wood).

“All night and all day I sing below the chimney.  Often in my cricket-language, I have consoled Cinderella for the snubs of her elder sister.

“Ah, what pleasure to sit up at night, and watch the crimson flames embracing the wood (or hugging the wood) with both arms at once, and to listen to all the sounds and to hear the life of the house!

“Nestling in one’s good warm nook, how pleasant to hear Winter, who weeps and prowls round about the house outside, all wan and blue-nosed with cold, trying to smuggle itself inside some chink in the shutter!”

Of course this does not give us much about the insect itself, which remains invisible in the poem, just as it really remains invisible in the house where the voice is heard.  Rather does the poem express the feelings of the person who hears the cricket.

When we come to the subject of grasshoppers, I think that the French poets have done much better than the English.  There are many poems on the field grasshopper; I scarcely know which to quote first.  But I think you would be pleased with a little composition by the celebrated French painter, Jules Breton.  Like Rossetti he was both painter and poet; and in both arts he took for his subjects by preference things from country life.  This little poem is entitled “Les Cigales.”  The word “cigales,” though really identical with our word “cicala,” seldom means the same thing.  Indeed the French word may mean several different kinds of insects, and it is only by studying the text that we can feel quite sure what sort of insect is meant.