are, in the chill and the gloom, with the great cliff towering
up and the pinnacles and tall trees catching the sunlight
at the top. Then it is very still there. You will see no 20
one along that shore. A great eagle will go sailing out, or
a hawk will drop and splash after a fish, but you will see
no other living thing, except at the landing. There are
schooners in the river, of course, but they keep to the New
York shore to avoid being becalmed.

You can lie there in your boat, in the slack water near
the crag foot, and hear nothing but the wind, the suck of
the water, or the tinkle of a scrap of stone falling from the
cliff face. It is like being in the wilds, in one of the desolate
places, to lie there in a boat watching the eagles. 5

--_A Tarpaulin Muster._

1. Put yourself in the author's place and try to
visualize this scene as he viewed it. Tell what you
see. From what position are you looking?

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

BY JOHN KEATS

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper's--he takes the lead 5
In summer luxury--he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost 10
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper's among the grassy hills.

1. What keeps the poetry of earth alive in the heat
of summer? In the cold of winter? What does Keats
mean by his first line?

TO A WATERFOWL

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Bryant saw a solitary waterfowl winging its way
high up in the air in the twilight of evening. The
sight sets him thinking of the inborn sense of the
bird. Where was it going? How did it know it was on
the right way? Who gave it the power to direct its
flight? Then he imagines that the bird is bound for
its nesting place among its fellow