The Cricket (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Frederick Goddard Tuckerman
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Work: Ode
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Ode
- Subjects: Nature, Music or musicians, Death or dying, Sea or seafaring life, Life and death, Insects
The Poem
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman’s posthumously published “The Cricket” is an irregular ode of 131 lines divided into five sections of unequal length. The titular insect, at first glance almost comically inconsequential, provokes in the poet a meditation on death that leads him ultimately to affirm the value of life.
The introductory section presents a lyrical consideration of sound-producing insects. Both the “humming bee” and the “dogday locust” have their bards, but the cricket, whose voice is “bright” among “the insect crowd,” has not been...
[The entire page is 1563 words long]
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